Court Opinion

ID: 9706297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:39:07.602831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:20.903376
License: Public Domain

ADKINS, Judge, concurring.
I agree with the majority in all respects regarding appellant Morns. I concur with the holding of the majority that appellant Everett’s conviction should be affirmed, but I do not agree that the trial court appropriately exercised its discretion in refusing to grant Everett’s motion to strike Juror No. 521 for cause. This motion was based on that juror’s expressed concern that he might be biased against the defendants because two of his brothers had been “gunned down in the street.” Although the trial court attempted to rehabilitate him, by asking if he could live up to the juror’s oath to listen fairly and impartially to the evidence and make a decision based on that evidence without any bias, he never offered definite assurance that he could.
Rather, he continued to hedge, notwithstanding the trial court’s efforts toward rehabilitation. When the trial court asked the above noted question, he answered, “I probably *538could, yes, but that does not relieve the fact that I have experience—.” He was cut off by the court, which said: “[E]veryone brings their life experience____” When he was asked again, “do you think it would affect your ability to be fair?” he again expressed uncertainty, indicating that it was “hard to say, but I think that I would probably—I mean, you know, hear the evidence that would be—When the court interrupted him again, asking if he “could keep an open mind until the end,” Juror No. 521 still was unable to answer unequivocally. He could only say, “I probably could. I probably could.” In my view, the juror’s uncertainty about his ability to be fair, despite leading questions from the judge, was fatal to his qualification to be a juror.
None of the cases cited by the majority support the proposition that a juror who has articulated his own bias, can be rehabilitated without affirming that he could be a fair and impartial juror, who would decide the case only on the facts presented. See Calhoun v. State, 297 Md. 563, 578-83, 468 A.2d 45 (1983)(after initially expressing partiality, prospective juror affirmed that he could be a “fair and impartial juror in deciding this particular case only on the facts and evidence presented”); Couser v. State, 282 Md. 125, 383 A.2d 389 (1978)(did not involve challenge for cause; court denied defendant’s motion to disclose prosecutor’s juror dossier); Kujawa v. Baltimore Transit Co., 224 Md. 195, 201, 167 A.2d 96 (1961)(suit for damages from automobile accident; held not error for trial court to decline to propound a question to prospective jurors regarding their opinion as to the adequacies or inadequacies of jury verdicts in negligence cases); Garlitz v. State, 71 Md. 293, 300, 18 A. 39 (1889) (each prospective juror swore that he was without bias or prejudice and felt confident that he could give the defendant a perfectly fair and impartial trial, upon the evidence alone) (1889); cf. Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 727-28, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 1645, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961)(conviction reversed because of biased jury, even though jurors said they could be fair and impartial).
Cases in which a prospective juror indicated some bias, but upon further questioning, expressed the unequivocal view that *539he or she could decide the case fairly and impartially, based on the evidence, are legion. In these, convictions are generally upheld. I have found no cases, however, upholding a trial court’s refusal to strike for cause a prospective juror, who, after expressing an initial bias, was unable to state without reservation that he or she could decide the case fairly and impartially based on the evidence.
In Brown v. State, 728 So.2d 758 (Fla.Ct.App.1999), a Florida appellate court reversed a conviction of a defendant when the trial court refused to grant the defendant’s motion to strike for cause. The juror in Brown initially explained that “ ‘a good friend ... was involved in an attempted murder where somebody tried to shoot him and I haven’t really been able to deal with that as far as not having a biased opinion on people involved in armed robbery and cases like that.... I don’t know—anything about his case but I have really—I have little patience for these types of crimes.’ ” Id. at 759. When asked by the trial court whether he could set aside his “personal feelings concerning crime or what happened to your friend,” and be impartial, the prospective juror said: “ T am not really positive about that, but I guess that I would just have to go through it. I really couldn’t say for sure how I would react.’ ” Id.
When asked whether he could follow the court’s instruction not to take his friend’s experience into consideration and be impartial, he said: “Yeah, I think so.” Id. The Florida Court of Appeals held that a trial court’s
discretion is abused where the court refuses to excuse for cause a prospective juror who responds with equivocal or conditional answers, thus raising a reasonable doubt as to whether the prospect possesses the state of mind necessary to render an impartial decision. Even a cold transcript can reveal equivocal or conditional responses not reflective of a prospect’s final detached determination to serve as a fair and impartial juror. A reviewing court may therefore, from time to time, and as to jury equivocations, find itself with a better view than the trial court because of the greater *540amount of time available to it for rendering decisions. Such is the situation in this case.
Id. at 759 (citation omitted). Similarly, in this case, I believe that the “cold record” reveals sufficient “doubt as to whether the prospect possesse[d] the state of mind necessary to render an impartial decision.” See id.
The Supreme Court has characterized the right to an impartial jury as our “most priceless” safeguard of individual liberty:
England, from whom the Western World has largely taken its concept of individual liberty and of the dignity and worth of every man, has. bequeathed to us safeguards for their preservation, the most priceless of which is that of trial by jury----In essence, the right to jury trial guarantees to the criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial, ‘indifferent’ jurors.... The theory of the law is that a juror who has formed an opinion cannot be impartial.
Irvin, 366 U.S. at 721, 81 S.Ct. at 1642-43 (citations omitted).
In my view, to preserve this most “priceless safeguard” of individual liberty, a prospective juror who has admitted to some bias must, as a threshold requirement, be willing to unconditionally state his own belief in his ability to set that bias aside and be impartial. Here, Juror No. 521 did not do so. The prospect of a juror who harbored doubt about his impartiality threatens the safeguard of trial by an “indifferent jury.”
Whether the trial court’s erroneous refusal to strike this juror for cause merits a new trial raises another interesting question. The Court of Appeals anticipated the dilemma presented by this case in Lockhart v. State, 145 Md. 602, 620-21, 125 A. 829 (1924). There, the trial court initially allowed each party an unlimited number of peremptory strikes, but eventually reinstated a limit in order to conclude jury selection. On appeal, the defendants complained that the court’s erroneous refusal to strike certain jurors for cause required them to use their peremptory challenges to keep those jurors off the jury, and thereby reduced the number of their peremp*541tory challenges and prevented them from fully exercising their peremptory rights. The Court of Appeals recognized the viability of that complaint, but held that the defendants had waived it by accepting the court’s unusual offer not to strictly enforce the limit on peremptories.
In dictum, the Court opined:
If the legal right of the defendants to the use of peremptory challenges had been actually reduced by any of the trial court’s rulings, we should not require affirmative proof of resulting injury as a condition of reversal.
Id. at 620, 125 A. 829.
In 1979 the Court of Appeals applied this principle in holding that, when the effectiveness of the parties’ rights to peremptory strikes is impaired, reversal of the conviction is required. In King v. State Roads Comm’n, 284 Md. 368, 371, 396 A.2d 267 (1979), the Court ordered a new trial because the method used to select the jury denied the parties the full privileges of their peremptory strikes. After excusing jurors for cause from a 28 person jury panel, and allowing each party to use four peremptory strikes, the trial judge had to strike five additional jurors. That method diluted the parties’ peremptory strikes by effectively giving the trial court more strikes than either party. The Court of Appeals explained that “the importance of the peremptory challenge requires that any significant deviation from the prescribed procedures that impairs or denies the privilege’s full exercise is error that, unless waived, ordinarily will require reversal without the necessity of showing prejudice.” In support of its holding, the Court cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), presumably for its language that a “denial or impairment of the right [to exercise peremptory challenges] is reversible error without a showing of prejudice.” Id., 380 U.S. at 219, 85 S.Ct. at 835.
In United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. 304, 317 n. 4, 120 S.Ct. 774, 782 n. 4, 145 L.Ed.2d 792 (2000), however, the Supreme Court disavowed their own language in Swain, char*542acterizing it as “unnecessary to the decision in that case,” and “founded on a series of our early cases decided long before the adoption of harmless-error review.” The Martinez-Salazar Court held that “a defendant’s exercise of peremptory challenges ... is not denied or impaired when the defendant chooses to use a peremptory challenge- to remove a juror who should have been excused for cause.” Id., 528 U.S. at 317, 120 S.Ct. at 782. The majority opinion reasoned that- the trial court’s eiTor in its ruling on the motion to strike for cause did not compel the defendant to challenge the juror peremptorily, “thereby reducing his allotment of peremptory challenges by one.” Instead, the dek'ndant could have allowed the challenged juror to sit on the jury, and pursue a Sixth Amendment challenge on appeal. The Court considered this a “hard choice [rather than] no choice.” Id., 528 U.S. at 315, 120 S.Ct. at 781.
Justice Souter expressed the view in his concurring opinion that
[t]he resolution of juror-bias questions is never clear cut, and it may well be regarded as one of the very purposes of peremptory challenges to enable the defendant to correct judicial error on the point. Indeed.that must have been one of their purposes in earlier years, when there was no appeal from a criminal conviction.
Id., 528 U.S. at 319, 120 S.Ct. at 783.
I am persuaded by the views expressed in both the majority and concurring opinions in Martinez-Salazar. That case is not controlling because the right to exercise peremptory challenges is not created by the Constitution, so that the number and the manner of their exercise is to be determined by the states. See Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 89, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 2279, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988). I am also persuaded, however, that if the Court of Appeals were to consider the issue in this case, in light of the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Martinez-Salazar, it would hold that because Everett exercised one of his peremptory strikes to remove Juror No. 521, he suffered no prejudice, and would not be entitled to a new *543trial. Accordingly, I concur in the majority decision to affirm Everett’s conviction.