Court Opinion

ID: 9647310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:30:46.721752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:47.761230
License: Public Domain

*260NIX, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I am constrained to reiterate my dissent from the majority’s conclusion that death-qualified juries are not conviction prone. As I stated in my dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Maxwell, 505 Pa. 152, 172, 477 A.2d 1309, 1319, cert. denied, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 370, 82 L.Ed.2d — (1984), "... studies now demonstrate convincingly that persons favoring the death penalty are significantly more likely to vote for conviction in capital cases and that persons excluded from jury service on the basis of their unwillingness to impose the death penalty represent a distinct and sizeable group of the community.” Id., 505 Pa. at 172, 477 A.2d at 1319. Thus I believe that the defendant’s right to trial by an impartial jury selected from a representative cross-section of the community has been violated by the death qualification process because this process “produces juries that are both prosecution prone and unrepresentative.” Id., 505 Pa. at 172, 477 A.2d at 1319. Therefore, I dissent.
Further, even assuming the continued efficacy of the death-qualification process, the record reveals that trial counsel failed to object to the prosecution’s challenge for cause of several potential jurors whose testimony did not establish their excludability under Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968). Trial counsel made no attempt to rehabilitate these challenged veniremen through further questioning as to their ability to return a verdict of death where the evidence called for such a verdict.
While I am inclined to agree with the majority that appellant’s naive pre-trial tactics should be considered in an evaluation of counsel’s stewardship, those actions on the part of appellant cannot be deemed in any way to justify counsel’s omissions during the selection of the jury proceedings. Lack of preparation time is irrelevant to trial counsel’s ability to respond to a prosecutorial challenge to a venireman on Witherspoon grounds; all that is demanded of counsel in such situations is a knowledge of the law. For *261that reason I am convinced that our normal test of stewardship, whether counsel’s actions had a reasonable basis designed to effectuate the interests of his client, should be applied. I would in the alternative remand for an evidentiary hearing to determine trial counsel’s reasons for not objecting to the exclusion of the veniremen in question.