Court Opinion

ID: 9773177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:38:58.770772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:50.554183
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, Justice,
concurring in result.
The Sixth Amendment requires that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a ... public trial by an impartial jury_” U.S. Const, amend. VI. Mo. Const, art. I, § 18(a), guarantees the accused “a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the county.” Provided it operates within these broad constitutional requirements, Missouri may determine for itself the qualifications of persons who may sit as jurors and the manner in which persons who compose a venire panel are chosen for service on the petit jury. Indeed, there is no constitutional requirement that *197a state’s jury selection scheme include peremptory challenges. Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 219, 85 S.Ct. 824, 835, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965); Stilson v. United States, 250 U.S. 583, 586, 40 S.Ct. 28, 29, 63 L.Ed. 1154 (1919). The United States Constitution requires no more than that the jury finally seated be impartial. Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 88, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 2278, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988). The Missouri Constitution, too, measures its guarantee against the jury finally seated, not against the procedure by which an impartial jury is selected.
The majority is quite correct when it says “[o]ur holdings are not based on abstract constitutional provisions_” (Op. at 193). The statutes, not the constitution, control the use of peremptory challenges in this state.
In this case, the majority reverses defendant’s conviction and death sentence because the trial court failed to strike a juror for cause, thereby requiring the defendant to exercise one of her ten peremptory challenges to remove that venireperson from the jury. The Court holds, “[a] juror who should be excluded for cause under Section 546.150 is not a ‘qualified’ juror under [section] 546.180.3.” (Op. at 193).
The majority supports its conclusion on three bases. First, the majority claims that Missouri trial practitioners “have always placed great value in the peremptory challenge and our decisions recognize this value.” (Op. at 193). This rationale is high sounding; it means little. The State’s argument in this case does not threaten the existence of peremptory challenges, only the manner in which they are exercised. The State argues no more than that the defendant must show that the jury finally seated is not impartial; such an argument neither diminishes the “great value” of peremptory challenges nor breaks free of constitutional guarantees.
In describing peremptory challenges, this Court has said,
Experience has taught that it is not always possible to objectively demonstrate juror partiality. Not infrequently, juror partiality is subtle, elusive, and highly subjective.... Purity of the right to be tried by an impartial jury is so zealously guarded that an accused may covet his peremptory challenges and “spend” them as he alone sees fit.... The strength and integrity of trial by jury in a criminal case lies in the composite impartiality of the jury finally selected to try a particular case, and both are eroded to an unknown extent when even a single or isolated instance of partiality creeps in, whether objectively demonstrated or subjectively sensed.
State v. Morrison, 557 S.W.2d 445, 446 (Mo. banc 1977), quoting State v. Thompson, 541 S.W.2d 16, 17 (Mo.App.1976). The Court’s statement in Morrison is simply not correct. The use of peremptory challenges has never been totally unfettered. First, the state has chosen to make an arbitrary number of peremptory challenges available to each party. Once these are exhausted, the fact that other veniremen who harbor, at least in a party’s mind, a subjective manifestation of prejudice are left to serve as jurors is not grounds for reversal. This is because our system requires the parties to weigh the “highly subjective” manifestations and remove the most harmful potential jurors. As a result of this weighing process, other less (subjectively measured) biased persons become jurors if the number of peremptory challenges allowed by the statute is exhausted.
Second, Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), requires that the state explain its use of peremptory challenges against black persons in criminal cases. A requirement that a party explain a peremptory challenge renders that challenge something other than peremptory. Indeed, Justice Marshall argues that the time has come to abolish peremptory challenges altogether because they bear the potential for exercise in racially motivated ways. Id. at 103, 107-08, 106 S.Ct. at 1726, 1728-29 (Marshall, J., concurring in the judgment).
In sum, the purposes of peremptory challenges and the removal of veniremen for cause are identical. Each seeks to assure that the jury finally seated is as impartial *198as possible. That is all our constitutions require. Because the result sought by the State does not seek to abolish peremptory challenges, but impose a harmless error standard, the first rationale advanced by the majority is makeweight.
Second, the majority claims that its holding is “grounded on our statutes.” (Op. at 193). In my view, this statement is not correct. Our legislature has established a two-tiered system for determining juror qualifications. Section 494.010, RSMo 1986, provides:
Every juror, grand or petit, shall be a citizen of the state, a resident of the county or of a city not within a county for which the jury may be impaneled; sober and intelligent, of good reputation, over twenty-one years of age and otherwise qualified.
If these threshold qualifications are met, Section 494.020, RSMo 1986, announces that still other characteristics are disquali-fiers, i.e., render a person “ineligible to serve as a juror.” These include convicted felons, persons who are illiterate in English, active members of the armed forces, licensed attorneys at law, judges of courts of record, and persons who in the judgment of a trial judge are incapable of performing the duties of a juror by reason of mental or physical illness or infirmity. These Section 494.020 qualifications are those to which Section 494.010 refers when it says “otherwise qualified”.
The majority makes no reference to Chapter 494 in its discourse. Instead, it assumes that the word “qualified” in Section 546.180.3, RSMo 1986, means objectively impartial. Inherent in this assumption, which is supported by case law as discussed later, is the notion that the General Assembly is incapable of saying “impartial” when it means to do so, despite that adjective’s prominence in our constitutions. Prior decisions are apparently founded on a belief that the legislature is unable to write “bias” or “prejudice” when it so intends, despite those words’ use in Section 546.150, RSMo 1986, which addresses juror challenges, as does Section 546.-180.3. An objective reading of Section 546.180.3, together with Section 494.010 and Section 494.020, shows the majority’s claims that its decision is “grounded on our statutes” (op. at 193) and founded on “explicit statutory language” (op. at 193) are uncertain.
Third, the majority says that its holding is “confirmed in decisions.” (Op. at 193). “We have consistently held,” says the majority, “that a defendant is entitled to a full panel of qualified jurors before being required to make peremptory challenges, and that there is prejudicial error in failing to sustain a meritorious challenge for cause.” (Op. at 193).
One cannot seriously dispute the principal opinion, however, for stating this conclusion. It is correct because this Court, I believe without statutory mandate, has treated the words “impartial,” “competent” and “qualified” as synonyms since before the Civil War. In Baldwin v. State, 12 Mo.Rep. 142 (1848), this Court found no reversible error when the trial court permitted a juror who had formed an opinion about the case from newspaper accounts, but who nevertheless believed he was without prejudice, to serve. The «Court said,
The information upon which the juror predicated his opinion, was derived from newspaper statements, which, of all other sources of intelligence, are the most uncertain and unreliable.... The juror further stated that he had no prejudice or bias on his mind. If, therefore, the question of competency is referable to the juror himself, then he was competent; but it was not his province to pass upon that question ... it was the duty of the court to decide whether, according to the facts, he was competent.... Where the juror qualifies himself under the statute, and the presiding judge accepts him, this court cannot say that an error has been committed.
(Emphasis added). Id. at 143-44. See also State v. Foley, 144 Mo. 600, 46 S.W. 733, 735 (1898) (“the defendant is entitled to a panel of 40 qualified or impartial jurors”). While there appears to me to be little etymological support for the judicial replacement of the statutory word “qualified” *199with “impartial” or “competent,” it is an historical fact, as is the legislature’s apparent contentment with the Court’s manipulation of its words.
Were this a case of first impression, I would hold that the phrase “qualified to sit” in Section 546.180.3 means only that the potential juror in question is not disqualified by Section 494.010 or Section 494.-020. I would further hold that a trial court’s failure to sustain a challenge for cause is prejudicial error, and therefore cause for reversal of a conviction, only to the extent it is shown that the jury finally impaneled is not impartial. The mere fact that a party must exercise a peremptory challenge to excise a biased juror is, in my view, harmless error, if the jury itself is impartial.
This is not a case of first impression, however. There is abundant precedent for the principal opinion’s position, even though I believe that precedent is founded on an incorrect reading of the statutes. This is a case in which the tension between a desire to interpret the law properly and the weight of precedent is keenly felt. Because the legislature has the constitutional authority to alter the manner in which peremptory challenges are exercised, irrespective of this Court’s pronouncements on the subject, and because the assumptions about peremptory challenges expressed by the principal opinion are so tightly woven into the tapestry of the law of Missouri, in this case stare decisis must prevail.
I,therefore, reluctantly concur in the result reached by the majority.