Opinion ID: 1940407
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the impact of trotter

Text: What has been the true impact of Trotter's per se error standard? I agree with the majority's analysis of the decisions in which this Court has addressed denial of cause challenges under Trotter. These decisions demonstrate that this Court's application of the Trotter standard is not responsible for the multitudes of defendants seeking a new trial because of erroneously denied cause challenges. Nevertheless, this analysis ignores the impact of the per se reversal rule at the intermediate appellate court level. There are a significant number of cases where Florida district courts of appeal have reversed convictions and ordered new trials where defendants arguably received a trial by a fair and impartial jury. [26] These reversals illustrate the point that constitutionalizing the impairment of peremptory challenges runs counter to the Court's decision in Ross and is hardly inconsequential in view of the reality that [t]rial courts ... rule on cause challenges by the minute, United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 146 F.3d 653, 661 (9th Cir.1998) (Rymer, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), quoted in United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. at 316, 120 S.Ct. 774, often between shades of gray. Id. The real irony of the majority's approach is that despite the success of the peremptory challenge mechanism in helping to achieve the ultimate goal of a fair and impartial jury, reaching this goal is actually impaired by the Trotter per se reversal rule because it forces trial courts to retry cases previously decided by fair and impartial juries. Busby is just another example where one harmless error is the basis for reversing a trial by a fair and impartial jury. Such reversals are costly to the victims and to the judicial system, State v. Hickman, 205 Ariz. 192, 68 P.3d 418, 426 (2003), and give[ ] a strong incentive to ... state legislators to cut down the number of peremptories  or eliminate them altogether. United States v. Annigoni, 96 F.3d 1132, 1150 (9th Cir.1996) (Kozinski, J., dissenting).