Court Opinion

ID: 9466231
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:09:05.553319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:36.919263
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
While I concur in all other aspects of the majority opinion, with great respect, I dissent as to the issue dealt with in section II B because I believe that the district judge committed reversible error in refusing to strike for cause a prospective juror whose daughter-in-law was a bank teller who had, within a year of Jones’ trial, been the victim of a bank robbery. If the prospective juror should have been excused, even though the defendant struck the prospective juror peremptorily, nevertheless the result was prejudicial, since the defendant was thereby precluded from using the peremptory strike on another venireman he might have wished to remove from the jury. United States v. Rucker, 557 F.2d 1046, 1049 (4th Cir. 1977).
An impartial jury is an imperative constitutional right under the Sixth Amendment and here the circumstances indicate the probability of partiality. See United States v. Caldwell, 178 U.S.App.D.C. 20, 32 n. 47, 543 F.2d 1333, 1345 n. 47 (D.C.Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1087, 96 S.Ct. 877, 47 L.Ed.2d 97 (1976) (“The law in this jurisdiction is that jurors must be excused for cause if their experience or that of their close relatives is such as to indicate the probability of partiality.”). Disclaimer by the juror of any bias is not enough where the prospect of lack of impartiality is great. United States v. Allsup, 566 F.2d 68, 71 (9th Cir. 1977). In Allsup, two prospective jurors disclosed during voir dire examination that they worked at other branches of a bank which the defendant was accused of robbing. The court stated, 566 F.2d at 72:
The prospective jurors who worked for the bank robbed should have been excused for cause. Excusing those prospective jurors would have caused a slight inconvenience, which was heavily counterbalanced by the substantial probability that these prospective jurors, despite their disclaimers, could not become the “indifferent” jurors which the Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant.
The present case is stronger than Allsup from the defendant’s point of view in one respect, weaker in another. It is stronger in that the relative of the prospective juror was no;t simply a bank employee but was a teller who had herself been the recent victim of a bank robbery. This case is weaker than Allsup from the defendant’s point of view in that it is not the prospective juror who had been exposed to bank robbery, but rather a relative, his daughter-in-law.
Nevertheless, balancing the slight inconvenience that is occasioned by excusing the juror for cause against the strong probability of bias, I conclude that the defendant was constitutionally entitled to have the prospective juror excused for cause. Compare United States v. Poole, 450 F.2d 1082 (3rd Cir. 1971) and United States v. Poole, 450 F.2d 1084 (3rd Cir. 1971). Although those related cases went off on other grounds, the court had this to say with respect to a claim that veniremen (one of whom was a bank teller, the other a spouse of a bank teller) should have been excused for cause:
Appellant also contends that the district court erred on voir dire by its denial of the challenge for cause of two veniremen who were, or were related to, bank tellers. In the context of a criminal prosecution for armed bank robbery we find this contention of some significance.
See also Sims v. United States, 132 U.S.App.D.C. 111, 114 n. 5, 405 F.2d 1381, 1384 n. 5 (D.C.Cir. 1968). Sims goes further than *1010we would be required to go here for it states that, where a felony murder charge growing out of the fatal shooting of a cabdriver was involved, “jurors should be excused for cause if they are, or are related to, taxidrivers”. The opinion did not indicate that the cabdrivers referred to would have had to have been victims of crimes of violence.
United States v. Caldwell, 178 U.S.App.D.C. 20, 34, 543 F.2d 1333, 1347 (D.C.Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1087, 96 S.Ct. 877, 47 L.Ed.2d 97 (1976) appears to represent a retreat from Sims for it held it was not reversible error to fail to excuse for cause prospective jurors who were close relatives of police officers, where the charge was murder of a policeman. However, the retreat did not reach the point at which we find ourselves, for the Caldwell court was at pains to point out “that none was related to a police officer who had been murdered”. Here the close relative of the prospective juror had been the recent victim of a bank robbery. Cf. Government of the Virgin Islands v. Bodle, 427 F.2d 532, 534 (3d Cir. 1970), where a juror in the case of someone accused of rape was discovered, after the trial had been completed, to have had a sister who had been raped. Despite the obviously heavier burden on the accused when he first raises the question of the juror’s partiality after trial, rather than at the pre-trial voir dire,1 the Third Circuit concluded
that the undisclosed information regarding Juror Blyden’s sister created a substantial possibility that Blyden was not capable of objective determination of the facts of the case. Under these circumstances, appellant is entitled to a new trial.
While Mikus v. United States, 433 F.2d 719, 724 (2nd Cir. 1970) rejects Sims out of hand as persuasive authority on the facts of that particular case, it is, itself, readily distinguishable from the situation before us. There the charge was bank robbery and one prospective juror was the wife of the chairman of another bank. Bank robberies do not customarily occur in that portion of the premises frequented by principal officers such as the chairman or president. Had the indictment in Mikus charged abduction of a senior bank official, and the holding of him for ransom, the holding might well have been that refusing to excuse the prospective juror, a wife of a bank chairman, for cause was an abuse of the trial court’s discretion.
The majority of the panel declines “to establish a per se rule of disqualification where a juror is related to a victim of a similar crime”. That constitutes a suggestion that the matter of whether to excuse for cause was within the discretion of the trial judge, and could have been decided either way. While the degree of relationship between the prospective juror and the victim of a prior, similar crime may in other cases become attenuated enough to make the decision a discretionary one, I am satisfied that, absent some extraordinary circumstance not present here, the rule should be generally the same in all cases involving a parent-in-law and child-in-law, and that it should require excuse for cause upon a defendant’s request.2 Otherwise we may be confronted with a situation where different judges in a single district may always excuse, never excuse, or sometimes excuse and sometimes not excuse. Such a situation would be incompatible with the even-handed application of justice.
Since the position I have adopted would lead to a new trial, and since there is only a remote possibility that the same issue would arise on retrial, it is inappropriate to ex*1011press an opinion as to whether it was reversible error to refuse to excuse for cause a prospective juror who was the spouse of a bank teller, where the bank teller had not been the victim of a bank robbery. Cf. United States v. Poole, supra, 450 F.2d at 1085.

. No questions directed at the basis for bias involved were put specifically to the prospective juror in Bodle, only general questions designed to elicit information as to possible bias. In Jones’ case, by contrast, the grounds for bias was clearly identified during the voir dire.

. The challenged venireman whose relative had been a recent bank robbery victim stated that his daughter-in-law lived with him in the past but “[n]ot at the present.” While the prospective juror had not talked about the robbery with his daughter-in-law, and knew no details, those circumstances are as consistent with concern that she not be reminded of a traumatic experience as they are with indifference on the part of the venireman.