Court Opinion

ID: 9694285
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:34:52.327423+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:58.835763
License: Public Domain

FERREN, Associate Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in the result:
This case concerns the prosecutor’s inadvertent failure to disclose a government police witness to the jury panel during voir dire, followed by a juror’s private communication with the police witness — an acquaintance of the juror — during the trial. The majority does not dispute the defense representation that, if the government had timely disclosed its witness to the jury panel, the defense would have used a peremptory strike against the juror, who presumably would have acknowledged she knew the witness. See ante at 1069 & n. 11. The majority, moreover, is willing to assume for sake of argument that, if appellants could demonstrate they had preserved for review their claimed right to the peremptory strike, the trial court would have erred in failing to grant the requested mistrial. See ante at 1069-1070. The majority, however, does not go very deeply into the mistrial issue, because it concludes that appellants have not, in fact, preserved their argument. After pointing out that peremptory strikes are not a matter of constitutional right and concluding, as a result, that there was no “structural error” warranting automatic reversal under Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991), the majority shifts its review to plain error, rather than harmless error, and concludes there was no prejudice affecting substantial rights. This analysis, I believe, is unsatisfactory.
I.
It is important to put the discussion in context by addressing, first, the line of decisions that appears to underlie the court’s ruling: the “mistaken juror” cases. These are eases in which a juror has honestly failed to answer a voir dire question correctly, and thus has failed to disclose information that defense counsel — learning of it after submission of the case to the jury — uses to seek a mistrial on the ground that the defense had been deprived of an inevitable peremptory strike. See, e.g., McDonough Power Equipment, Inc. v. Greenwood, 464 U.S. 548, 104 S.Ct. 845, 78 L.Ed.2d 663 (1984) (in personal injury case, juror mistakenly failed to answer voir dire question seeking information about previous injuries that resulted in disability or prolonged pain to members of juror’s immediate family when in fact juror’s son had sustained broken leg as result of exploding tire); Harris v. United States, 606 A.2d 763 (D.C.1992) (in armed robbery case, juror who misunderstood question failed to disclose on voir dire that her son had been convicted of crime within past ten years).
In that kind of case, the Supreme Court has held that the defendant is not entitled to a new trial unless he or she can “demonstrate that a juror failed to answer honestly a material question on voir dire, and then further show that a correct response would have provided a valid basis for a challenge for cause.” Greenwood, 464 U.S. at 556, 104 S.Ct. at 850; see Harris, 606 A.2d at 765-67. The Court stressed that
[o]ne touchstone of a fair trial is an impartial trier of fact — “a jury capable and willing to decide the case solely on the evidence before it.” Voir dire examination serves to protect that right by exposing possible biases, both known and unknown, on the part of potential jurors.
Greenwood, 464 U.S. at 554, 104 S.Ct. at 849 (citations omitted). Thus, reversal is permitted only upon a showing of actual bias, not for mere loss of a peremptory strike. See id. at 555-56, 104 S.Ct. at 849-50; Harris, 606 A.2d at 766 n. 5 (citing Greenwood).
The rationale underpinning this “actual bias,” id., limitation on the loss of peremptory strikes in “mistaken juror” cases is the interest in finality that would be ill-served by “recreat[ing] the peremptory challenge process” when “jurors from all walks of life,” many of whom “may be uncertain as to the meaning of terms which are relatively easily understood by lawyers and judges,” make “mistaken, though honest, response[s] to a question.” Greenwood, 464 U.S. at 555, 104 S.Ct. at 849-50. Such mistakes are bound to happen. Thus, according to the Court, ab*1075sent actual bias of a juror who is later found to be unsuitable, the justice system should not be forced to pay the price of a new trial for the unpreventable loss of a peremptory strike; that would be “insist[ing] on something closer to perfection than our judicial system can be expected to give.” Id.1
It is important to understand that, in these mistaken juror cases, all the basic protections for a fair trial have been in place: for example, an unbiased judge, competent counsel, the correct number of jurors, and a jury voir dire procedure carried out by the book. The only flaw was an honest mistake by a layperson who could not have been faulted in any way for misunderstanding a lawyer’s question. In short, the principal actors charged with administering the criminal justice system could not readily have prevented what happened.
In contrast, in this case the prosecutor, however inadvertently, broke a basic rule underlying a fair voir dire procedure. The prosecutor — an officer of the court — failed to show the venire panel a -witness whom everyone agrees the prosecutor was duty-bound to reveal to all prospective jurors before trial, and whom the defense — again, all agree— would have peremptorily stricken.2 This case, therefore, is analogous to those where there is a so-called “structural defect,” i.e., an omission of a basic protection inherent in the framework of a fair trial. This kind of defect, as we shall see, has typically made a finding of harmless error considerably more difficult than in the honest-juror-mistake eases.
As the majority points out, the term “structural defect” originated in Fulminante, where the Supreme Court distinguished between “structural defects” and “trial errors” in assessing, respectively, whether constitutional errors were reversible per se or subject to harmless error review. Because peremptory strikes are not a constitutional right, Fulminante automatically pushes a case involving peremptory challenges into the harmless error, not per se reversible error, category. On the other hand, because the type of error here, while not of constitutional magnitude, is structural in nature, the harmless error issue is more complicated than usual.3
In Fulminante, Chief Justice Rehnquist defines “trial error” as “error which occurred during the presentation of the case to the jury, and which may therefore be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented in order to determine whether its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id., 499 U.S. at 307-08, 111 S.Ct. at 1264. He then defines “structural defects” as defects “affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than simply an error in the trial process itself. “Without these basic protections, a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence, and no criminal punishment may be regarded as fundamentally fair.’ Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. at 577-78 [, 106 S.Ct. at 3106] (citation omitted).” Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 310, 111 S.Ct. at 1265.
The voir dire procedure for selecting a jury is premised, among other things, on the government’s disclosing to prospective jurors all the witnesses it plans to call so that relationships between witness and juror that could give rise to challenge for cause, or to peremptory challenge, will be disclosed in *1076time to prevent the seating of a juror tainted by such a relationship. See United States v. Brown, 799 F.2d 134, 136 (4th Cir.1986) (disclosing witnesses’ names necessary so that venirepersons can respond to questions concerning bias); United States v. Anderson, 626 F.2d 1358, 1374 (8th Cir.1980) (whether jurors are acquainted with witnesses is “clearly important to the question of the juror’s impartiality”); United States v. Baldwin, 607 F.2d 1295, 1297 (9th Cir.1979) (exposing juror’s acquaintance with witness necessary to “afford [defendant] an opportunity to exercise his [or her] peremptory challenges intelligently”). Accordingly, when the prosecutor fails, for whatever reason, to disclose all such witnesses to all prospective jurors, the structural guarantee of a fair jury selection procedure is compromised. Unlike a mistaken juror situation,4 this is the kind of breakdown in the process that the responsible official, the prosecutor, easily can — and should — prevent.5
Furthermore, whatever its fate in the mistaken juror cases, the loss of a peremptory strike is no minor matter. The Supreme Court (as well as this court) has given the right to peremptory challenges close to the same status as constitutional rights (though they are not such). For example, in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 219, 85 S.Ct. 824, 835, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), the Court called peremptory challenges “ ‘one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused,’”6 a statement repeated in Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 89, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 2278, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988), and in this court’s decisions in Wilson v. United States, 606 A.2d 1017, 1025 (D.C.1992); Cash v. United States, 553 A.2d 215, 217 (D.C.1989); Williams v. United States, 552 A.2d 510, 512 (D.C.1988); and Wells v. United States, 515 A.2d 1108, 1111 (D.C.1986). We have stressed, moreover, that “[t]he right to peremptory challenges, although not guaranteed by the Constitution, is regarded as necessary to a fair and impartial trial.” Id. at 1110 n. 1 (citations omitted); see Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 57, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 2358, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992) (peremptory challenges “are not constitutionally protected fundamental rights; rather they are but one state-created means to the constitutional end of an impartial jury and a fair trial”).
So how do we address the question of harmless, noneonstitutional structural error in withholding one of the accused’s “most important” rights “regarded as necessary to a fair and impartial trial”? Wells, 515 A.2d at 1110 n. 1, 1111. We first must consider exactly what the harm is.
The very idea of a peremptory challenge is the right to strike without regard to cause simply because the defense, for whatever reason (within constitutional limits),7 does not want that juror on board. The defendant accordingly has a right to use peremptories to achieve his or her own subjective idea of an impartial jury, within the prescribed lim*1077its. See supra note 7. It follows that a finding that a particular juror was not in fact biased — i.e., that there was no objective manifestation of bias — does not meet the objection that the defense had a right to exercise, and would have exercised, a peremptory strike lawfully based on purely subjective perception.
To a significant degree, therefore, a peremptory strike, given its very nature, is intended to prevent subjective harm. The likelihood that “Detective McCoy’s testimony had no bearing on appellant’s guilt or innocence” because he testified on undisputed, insignificant matters, ante at 1072, does not in any respect address the harm felt by a defendant who loses a peremptory strike that would have kept a juror who knew McCoy off the case. The peripheral nature of McCoy’s testimony does not mean that the juror who personally knew the Detective and spoke with him during trial — however fleetingly and inconsequentially — would not be inclined or influenced by that relationship to side with the government, or would not even be perceived to be so influenced. It is the defendant’s perception of taint and resulting emotional insecurity — not only hard evidence of actual bias — that reflects one kind of harm a peremptory strike (in the absence of a strike for cause) is intended to remedy. See Swain, 380 U.S. at 219, 85 S.Ct. at 835 (“The function of the [peremptory] challenge is not only to eliminate the extremes of partiality on both sides, but to assure the parties that the jurors ... will decide on the basis of the evidence before them”) (emphasis added). It is, in short, the defendant’s perception of an unfair trial that is as harmful — when the purpose of peremptories is accounted for — as the reality of an unfair trial.
I hasten to add, however, that the kind of subjective harm a defendant suffers from the loss of a peremptory strike is not necessarily the kind of harm the law protects. The interest at issue is the defendant’s right to an impartial jury, not to one that makes the defendant feel comfortable. Nonetheless, I believe that the Supreme Court and this court have recognized that such impartiality — i.e., objective fairness — can be achieved to the degree of certainty required under our legal system only if we allow the defense as well as the government, within constitutional limits, to pick an impartial jury to some extent through the use of subjective peremptory strikes based partly on intuition. Paradoxically, therefore, the assurance of a truly impartial, i.e., objectively fair, jury depends in part on a subjective assurance — through the limited use of peremptory strikes — that the jury is as impartial as can reasonably be hoped for, using intuitive as well as empirical data. See Ross, 487 U.S. at 88, 108 S.Ct. at 2278 (peremptory strikes “are a means to achieve the end of an impartial jury”).
To summarize: (1) peremptory strikes are one of the “most important” rights “regarded as necessary to a fair and impartial trial,” Wells, 515 A.2d at 1110 n. 1, 1111; (2) per-emptories, grounded partly in intuition, are considered essential to selection of a truly impartial jury; and (3) the prosecutor’s failure in this case to comply with the duty to show all government witnesses to the prospective jurors was an officially-caused breakdown of a basic — a structural — protection inherent in a fair trial. As a result, the harmless error analysis is not easily limited to deciding, as in the mistaken juror cases, whether the juror who would have been stricken was actually biased, i.e., subject to challenge for cause. The Greenwood/Harris remedy for loss of opportunity to strike a mistaken juror, which puts the public’s interest in finality above the defendant’s interest in a peremptory challenge — as long as the juror is found not actually biased — is not necessarily a valid solution when the government itself caused the defendant to lose this valuable protection. A prosecutor’s inadvertent failure to carry out an official duty to guarantee an impartial jury is considerably more serious, in my opinion, than the honest failure of a juror to understand and properly answer a lawyer’s question. The latter is unavoidable and excusable; the other is not. So what is the remedy?
This court in another context has dealt forthrightly with a case of nonconstitutional, structural error that I believe nicely informs the analysis here. In Flemming v. United States, 546 A.2d 1001 (D.C.1988) — a pre-Fulminante decision — this court reversed a con*1078viction when the defendant’s statutory right under D.C.Code § 16-705(c) to a twelve-member jury had been compromised by the trial court’s application of a Superior Court rule, inconsistent with the statute, permitting return of the verdict by eleven jurors when the court found “it necessary to excuse a juror for just cause after the jury ha[d] retired.” Flemming, 546 A.2d at 1003 (quoting Super. Ct.Crim. R. 23(b)).8 Here was a case in which the defendant was deprived of a most important, though state-created — and thus nonconstitutional — right where we reversed unhesitatingly. I do not believe we would have settled for an analysis that said: eleven jurors are acceptable under the statute when a defendant agrees; eleven jurors can therefore be an impartial factfinder; and the interest of finality trumps Flemming’s unwillingness to agree since there is no evidence the jury was a biased or otherwise imperfect factfinder. To the contrary, we unhesitatingly found the noneonstitutional right to a jury of twelve a compelling basis for automatic reversal. As I see it, the right to a peremptory challenge is as fundamental to jury selection as twelve jurors are to the jury itself.
It follows that state-caused deprivation of such a “most important,” structural right cannot be harmless error under the circumstances.9 It may be that the interests of finality can legitimately sacrifice the loss of a right to peremptory challenge — and thus the loss of a somewhat less demonstrably impartial jury — when honest juror mistake causes a problem that could not have been prevented. See Greenwood; Harris. But when the state itself effectively takes away the right, then I believe the defendant is entitled to the truly impartial jury that can be achieved (by definition) only when both parties have full use of their peremptory challenges, with all prospective jurors fully informed about who each government witness will be. In sum, because appellants were entitled to strike the tainted juror, the government’s failure, however inadvertently, to show the jury panel Detective McCoy dining voir dire, coupled with the trial court’s error is refusing to declare the requested mistrial, was not harmless.10
*1079II.
This does not end the inquiry, however, for there is a serious question whether Lyons and Cooper preserved the particular “peremptory strike” claim of error presented on appeal. According to the majority, because “[appellants’ mistrial motion was based solely on their assertion that the juror was biased” — i.e., that “the juror was or might [have been] ‘influenced’ by her contact with Detective McCoy” — this court should not construe that motion as a “claim that their right of peremptory challenge was infringed by the continued presence of this particular juror on the jury.” Ante at 1071. The transcript shows that the defense motion was premised on juror taint — on the “subtle kind of a pressure that she may have felt was being put on her” — and on the defendants’ unwillingness “to proceed with eleven jurors.” Counsel also lamented the absence of “an alternate [juror] at this point.”
Counsel argues on appeal that, implicit in the mistrial motion was an indication that, had the facts been known, trial counsel would have moved to replace the juror with another. We are told that the fact the magic words “peremptory strike” were not used should not make a difference here; the mistrial motion was clearly premised on defense inability to get rid of a juror who trial counsel said should not have been sitting on the jury and whom counsel would have excluded, if the government had disclosed Detective McCoy to the juror during voir dire.
There is a problem with this argument. Without any doubt, trial counsel perceived this to be akin to the mistaken juror cases, arguing in effect that there was, in fact, actual juror bias based on a “subtle kind of pressure.” Clearly, defense counsel led court and prosecutor to believe the issue was cognizable under the Greenwood/Harris rule where the test for a mistrial was a showing of a “valid basis for a challenge for cause.” Greenwood, 464 U.S. at 566, 104 S.Ct. at 850. The trial judge invited counsel to make all the points they could think of to enhance the record for appeal, and no one came close to suggesting that a Greenwood/Harris analysis was inapplicable when the state itself causes a structural breakdown depriving the defendant of a “most important” right to a peremptory strike. The trial judge, therefore, was not alerted to consider the analysis I find to be a compelling demonstration of harmful error. I agree with the majority: we are into plain error review.
Despite appellant’s loss of a “most important,” nonconstitutional structural right, the plain error standard is exceptionally difficult to meet, especially without violation of a constitutional right. See generally Allen v. United States, 495 A.2d 1145, 1152 (D.C.1985) (en banc). Unlike the majority, I believe this is a close question. Nonetheless, I cannot say that the error here was plain error “so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize the very fairness and integrity of the trial.” Watts v. United States, 362 A.2d 706, 709 (D.C.1976) (en banc) (citations omitted). In the “mistaken juror” cases, according to Greenwood/Hams, the loss of a peremptory strike is not reversible error unless the defendant had lost a strike that actually would have warranted dismissal of the juror for cause. I therefore cannot say that the government’s inadvertent failure to assure appellants’ peremptory strike rights is enough, in the absence of a finding of actual bias, to warrant reversal for plain, in contrast with harmful, error. The government’s unintentional culpability in such circumstances is not enough to overcome counsel’s failure to alert the trial court to the claim of error first addressed to us, and the “mistaken juror” cases demonstrate that affirmance upon loss of a peremptory strike, without grounds to strike for cause, would not be a miscarriage of justice. Ac*1080cordingly, while I respectfully dissent from the majority’s merits analysis, I must agree there was no plain error. I therefore concur in affirming the judgments of conviction.

. The Court in Greenwood was applying the federal harmless error statute and rule of procedure. It is interesting to note that this court, in assessing prejudice in mistaken juror cases, has been willing to factor in the asserted loss of a peremptory strike as part of the calculus. See Harris, 606 A.2d at 766; Shannon & Lucks Management Co., Inc. v. Roberts, 447 A.2d 37, 45 (D.C.1982).

. This is not a case where it later was revealed that a juror and witness knew each other but there was no contact during the trial and it was questionable whether the defense would, under all the circumstances, have used a peremptory challenge. See Shannon & Luchs, 447 A.2d at 44.

.The majority is willing to assume "solely for the sake of argument, and without deciding," that the error here (if preserved) was the trial court’s refusal to grant a mistrial. See ante at 1070. If that was error, I do not understand how such an error could ever be harmless. The very statement of the error itself is a pronouncement of reversible error; otherwise, a defendant, unquestionably entitled to a new trial, would stand convicted.

. Mistaken juror cases, where the error is derived from the pretrial voir'dire proceeding, do not involve "trial errors” as Justice Rehnquist has described them in Fulminante, but they do not really concern "structural errors” either, since the proper voir dire structure was in place and nothing could have been done to prevent the errors.

. The majority does not really question the government’s obligation to disclose its witnesses to all prospective jurors; it merely says, without citation to authority, that "such an obligation applies equally to the prosecution and to the defense.” Ante at 1069 n. 12. Perhaps the opinion is referring to my citation to Anderson, 626 F.2d at 1374, where the court ruled that if the government was required "to identify each of its witnesses for the jury ... the same should be required of defendants,” i.e., the defense should have to identify its own witnesses. Nothing in Anderson suggests that the defense is responsible for calling to the court’s attention the government's failure to disclose a government witness. The defense has enough to do in accounting for its own witnesses without being held accountable for policing the government’s own voir dire obligations.

. The Court was quoting Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 408, 14 S.Ct. 410, 414, 38 L.Ed. 208 (1894), in which the Court added: "Any systems for impanelling of a jury that prevents or embarrasses the full, unrestricted exercise by the accused of that right [of peremptory strikes], must be condemned.” Id.

. See J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 128 L.Ed.2d 89 (1994) (barring peremptory strikes based on gender); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) (barring peremptory strikes based on race).

. Thereafter, D.C.Code § 16-705(c) was amended to reflect the court rule; the statute now permits the court to receive a verdict from eleven jurors upon a finding of “extraordinary circumstances” making it “necessary” to excuse a sitting juror for "just cause.” D.C.Code § 16-705(c) (1996 Supp.).

. I say "under the circumstances,” recognizing that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to discern when, if ever, a nonconstitutional structural error could ever be harmless, rather than per se reversible. By definition, all structural errors, whether constitutional errors or not, concern "most important” rights which, if lost, are a substantial loss to the accused. One could probably use Fulminante to argue that the only structural errors reflecting really precious rights are constitutional errors, and that any other error best described as structural is simply not "structural.” It would follow that any analysis directed at a "nonconstitutional structural error” deals with an oxymoron. Until compelled by higher authority to write otherwise, however, I am satisfied by cases such as Flemming and this one that the idea of nonconstitutional structural error has a place in harmless error analysis. If, for example, Flemming had been decided after Fulmi-nante and someone had argued that the question of reversible error turned on the impartiality of an eleven-member jury rather than on the defective size of the jury, I doubt very much that this court could have been persuaded to affirm.

. Because of the intuitive component of a peremptory strike that is part of obtaining a truly impartial (objectively fair) jury, I cannot agree with Judge Ruiz's conclusion, ante at-, that this court can “quantitatively assess!]” jury impartiality, to the required degree of certainty, when a peremptory strike has been improperly prevented. The party entitled to a peremptory strike has a perspective that makes this intuitive exercise nondelegable and thus not assessable by others, including the court. The question, therefore, is whether the government’s action in forestalling the strike is excusable to the point of legal harmlessness when the defendant thereby loses a "most important,” structural right to participate as fully as the statute permits in creating and assuring an impartial juiy. I believe on the facts of this case the answer is no. When the government, not a "mistaken juror,” is responsible for loss of a peremptory strike, I see no basis here for finding harmless a less-than-properly-constituted jury. Judge Ruiz supplies a "cf.” citation to D.C.Code § 23 — 105(d) in support of her argument for harmlessness. Ante at 1073. That provision, cited by none of the parties, appears to be inapplicable. Section 23-105 (challenges to jurors) has four paragraphs. The first two, (a) and (b), refer to “peremptory challenges.” The third, subsection (c), provides that "[a]ny juror or alternate juror may be challenged for cause.” The fourth, subsection (d), also appears to pertain only to challenges for cause: *1079No verdict shall be set aside for any cause which might be alleged as ground for challenge of a juror before the jury is sworn, except when the objection to the juror is that he [or she] has a bias against the defendant such as would have disqualified him [or her], such disqualification was not known to or suspected by the defendant or his [or her] counsel before the juror was sworn, and the basis for such disqualification was the subject of examination or request for examination of the prospective jurors by or on request of the defendant. (Emphasis added.) In any event, absent the necessary disclosure necessary for a voir dire challenge, it is not easy to understand how subsection (d) would apply.