Court Opinion

ID: 9514315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:48:35.569342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:16.019292
License: Public Domain

KONENKAMP, Justice
(dissenting).
[¶ 21] This is a ease where the defendant does not allege the evidence was insufficient to convict him. His only assignment of error is the trial court’s failure to excuse two jurors for cause. Nonetheless, the defendant used his preemptory challenges to excuse these jurors. The question is whether the defendant was somehow prejudiced by this. The answer is no, because he has failed to show that the twelve people who actually heard his case were not impartial. Consequently, the majority reverses simply because two prospective jurors were excused by the defendant rather than by the court. Yet we must always remember, “the Constitution entitles a criminal defendant to a fair trial, not a perfect one.” Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 91, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 2280, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988)(quoting Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 681, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 1436, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986)).
[¶ 22] For constitutional purposes, the United States Supreme Court has settled this question:
[W]e reject the notion that the loss of a peremptory challenge constitutes a violation of the constitutional right to an impartial jury. We have long recognized that peremptory challenges are not of constitutional dimension. They are a means to achieve the end of an impartial jury. So long as the jury that sits is impartial, the fact that the defendant had to use a per*830emptory challenge to achieve that result does not mean the Sixth Amendment was violated.
Ross at 88, 108 S.Ct. at 2278, 101 L.Ed.2d at 90 (citations omitted).
[¶ 23] The majority incorrectly focuses upon the excused jurors, not whether the seated jury was fair and impartial. It continues to adhere to the antiquated rule that prejudice will be presumed if a defendant is forced to use a peremptory challenge when a prospective juror should have been removed for cause. Many courts faced with this very issue have fittingly abandoned this rule:
Whatever [the juror’s] prejudices were, she did not serve on defendant’s jury. The search for legal prejudice must therefore focus on the potential for prejudice that flowed from forcing defendant to use a peremptory challenge on [the juror] that might have been used to remove another juror. In the absence of some factual showing that this circumstance resulted in a juror being seated who was not impartial, the existence of prejudice is entirely speculative.
State v. Neuendorf, 509 N.W.2d 743, 746 (Iowa 1993). The Neuendorf Court explained:
Since the Ross decision disposed of the constitutional aspects of this issue, at least nineteen states have refused to apply an automatic reversal rule. ... Those states have concluded that in order to obtain relief under a legal theory that a juror is not impartial it must be shown that that juror actually served in the case. When that juror did not serve in the case, it must be shown that the jury that did serve was not impartial.
Id. at 747 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). Here, Etzkorn receives a new trial based on mere conjecture, as nothing in the record shows the actual jury was anything but fair and impartial. To require automatic reversal perpetuates adherence to an outmoded procedure which allows a justly convicted defendant a second shot at acquittal, without any showing the first jury was unfair in any respect.
[¶ 24] For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
[¶ 25] GILBERTSON, Justice, joins this dissent and I am authorized to so state.