Court Opinion

ID: 9690536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:21:59.515149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:52.597009
License: Public Domain

MICHOL O’CONNOR,
Justice dissenting from denial of en banc review.
This case presents the question whether a trial court may use two different venire panels called on two different days to select a jury in a noncapital case. While it is inevitably necessary in capital cases to use multiple small panels, in non-capital cases the entire twelve-member jury should be picked from one panel. That did not happen here. I believe it was error to use two separate venires to select the jury in this case, a non-capital case.
A. The Selection of the Jury
On May 29, 1998 a panel of 57 persons was summoned for the venire. During voir dire, a large number were eliminated for cause, primarily for two reasons: inability to convict upon the testimony of only one witness, and reluctance to find a person guilty of a felony for a small amount of cocaine. Those were valid concerns on the part of the potential jurors, and the State was entitled to have the trial court strike those jurors for cause. As a result, however, only 25 members remained on the venire panel before the process of making peremptory strikes began. The trial court stated on the record that, if the parties used of all their available peremptory strikes, there might not be sufficient jurors. Wfiien the peremptory strikes were completed, only seven members of the panel were left to serve as jurors. The trial court kept the seven venire members who were selected, swore them as jurors, and then, three days later, picked the remaining five jurors from an entirely different venire.
In my opinion, once it appeared that the venire panel was too small to permit the parties to use all their peremptory strikes, the trial court should have either summoned additional venire members or declared a mistrial. Although there is no *180direct statutory requirement to that effect, I believe it is implicit in several statutory provisions in the Code of Criminal Procedure.
B. Code of Criminal Procedure
A number of articles in the Code of Criminal Procedure imply that all jurors must be picked from the same venire in noncapital cases. First, Article 35.01 begins by stating:
When a case is called for trial and the parties have announced ready for trial, the names of those summoned as jurors in the case shall be called.
This plain statutory language means that a defendant and his counsel are entitled, after the parties announce they are ready, to a list of the entire panel of potential jurors. That is supported by the explicit command of Article 35.11 that “[t]he clerk shall deliver a copy of the list to the State’s counsel and to the defendant or his attorney.”
There are good reasons to require a jury panel in a non-capital to be selected from a single venire panel. For one thing, a defendant might look at the seated venire and decide to ask for a jury shuffle, under the authority of Article 35.11. A defendant could not make a fully informed decision as to the need for a shuffle unless he could see the complete venire that was to be used. What happened in this case was tantamount to showing the defendant only half the venire at the beginning. Similarly, a challenge under Articles 35.07 and 35.08 to the main array of the venire summoned must be made before voir dire. Splitting jury selection between two arrays (there is a new array of over a thousand people every day in Harris County) makes such a challenge impossible.
Other articles in Chapter 35, relating to the process of whittling the venire down to twelve jurors, imply that the full venire must be in the courtroom before the peremptory strikes are made. After the challenges to the underlying array are out of the way, Article 35.10 requires the trial court to “try the qualifications of those present who have been summoned to serve as jurors.” The phrase “those present” suggests that every potential juror for the case should be in the courtroom at the beginning of voir dire.
Article 35.14 provides for peremptory challenges made “without assigning any reason therefor,” meaning counsel can strike a venireman just on how the venireman looks (subject to the limitations of Article 35.261). The question “How does a juror look?” begs the further question: “Compared to whom?” To exercise peremptory strikes intelligently, counsel must be able to see the entire group of potential jurors. If, for example, counsel in a narcotics case could see that the full panel had two “aging hippies” with long hair and beards, he might strike Aging Hippie Number 1, whose brother was a policeman, whereas he might keep the first one if he did not know that Aging Hippie Number 2 was available.
Article 35.17 contains an explicit reference to conduct of voir dire examination “in the presence of the entire panel.” This provision permits the trial court to hold “bench conferences” so that a particular venire member’s answers to certain questions are not heard by the whole panel, but it otherwise contemplates that all potential jurors shall hear the other questions posed to the panel at large. Comparing the voir dire on May 29, 1998 and on June 1, 1998 shows that the two venires did not hear the same questions and answers, as Article 35.17 contemplates.
Article 35.20 provides that “[i]n selecting the jury from the persons summoned, the names of such persons shall be called in the order in which they appear upon the list furnished the defendant.” Plainly the “list” would have been different if the court had started over with an entirely new venire. This is also where the effect of a shuffle would be felt, and as stated already, it is impossible to know whether a shuffle would have been requested if one, larger venire had been summoned so that *181a complete jury could be seated from one venire. Similarity, this same “list” controls the operation of Article 35.26, which provides the final step in the process of seating the jury that actually will hear the case at trial.
Finally, the Code of Criminal Procedure makes special provisions for capital cases. Chapter 34 of the Code is devoted exclusively to the process of selecting venires for a capital jury trial. The Code specifically recognizes one exceptional category (i.e., capital cases only), which means it does not recognizes any other exceptions, according to the maxim of statutory construction, Expressio unius est exclusio alterius. As explained in Ex parte McIver, 586 S.W.2d 851, 856 (Tex.Crim.App.1979):
It is a well-known rule of statutory construction in this State that the express mention or enumeration of one person, thing, consequence, or class is tantamount to an express exclusion of all others.
A statutory exclusion is a “thing” or “class” for purposes of this maxim of construction. Thus, the Legislature’s expressed intent to make only one exception for piecemeal assembly of a criminal case jury seems clear. Notice in particular that, for this one exceptional category, Article 34.02 provides for the summoning of additional veniremen “[i]n any criminal case in which the court deems that the veniremen theretofore drawn will be insufficient for the trial ... or ... in which the venire has been exhausted by challenge or otherwise.... ” The Legislature easily could have applied the same language to noncapital cases, but it did not.
For these reasons, I would reverse and remand for a new trial.