Court Opinion

ID: 9468344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:12:29.637577+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:49.541632
License: Public Domain

NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority holds that the state, by inadvertently providing only 13 of the 26 peremptory challenges to which a defendant in a capital case is entitled by state statute, violates the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution. Whatever the merit of this conclusion, it has been foreclosed, I think, by the Supreme Court. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
I emphasize that I do not denigrate the importance of peremptory challenges. The use of peremptory challenges — challenges which may be exercised “without a reason stated, without inquiry and without being subject to the court’s control,” Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 220, 85 S.Ct. 824, 836, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965) — has a long history, dating back to English common law. See Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 408, 14 S.Ct. 410, 414, 38 L.Ed. 208 (1894). The practice “tends to persuade litigants of the fairness of juries and thus has an important role to play in the preservation of the jury system.” Comment, The Right of Peremptory Challenge, 24 U.Chi.L.Rev. 751, 762 (1957). It is one thing to say that peremptory challenges are important. That much is clear, as evidenced by the fact that every state grants peremptories by statute and the federal government grants them in Fed.R.Crim.P. 24. It is quite a different thing, however, to say that the right to peremptory challenges is constitutionally guaranteed. The majority, I think, loses sight of that distinction.
We may not grant habeas relief merely because we disapprove of a procedure used by a state court in trying an accused. “State prisoners are entitled to relief on federal habeas corpus only upon proving that their detention violates the fundamental liberties of the person, safeguarded against state action by the federal Constitution.” Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 312, 83 S.Ct. 745, 756, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963). *678Unless the state action complained of rises to the level of a constitutional violation, it is simply irrelevant that the action is “undesirable, erroneous or even ‘universally condemned.’ ” Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 146, 94 S.Ct. 396, 400, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973).
The majority acknowledges that the only reported case dealing with the precise issue before us holds that a denial of the full number of peremptory challenges provided by state law does not afford a basis for federal habeas relief. See Workman v. Cardwell, 338 F.Supp. 893 (N.D.Ohio), affirmed, 471 F.2d 909 (6th Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 932, 93 S.Ct. 2748 and 2762, 37 L.Ed.2d 161 (1973). The majority is led by five other cases, however, to the “inescapable conclusion that a defendant who has been denied half of the peremptories given by statute has been denied the right to assure the empaneling of an impartial jury.” With all due respect, I view that conclusion as being something less than inescapable.
The majority places great weight on certain language in the Supreme Court’s decision in Pointer v. United States, supra. The right to peremptory challenges, Justice Harlan stated, “is one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused.” 151 U.S. at 408,14 S.Ct. at 414. Nothing in Pointer, however, suggests that the Court deemed peremptory challenges to be constitutionally required.1 In any case, 25 years after Pointer, in Stilson v. United States, 250 U.S. 583, 40 S.Ct. 28, 63 L.Ed. 1154 (1919), the Court flatly rejected the suggestion that peremptory challenges are constitutionally secured. In Stilson, the defendants contended that by deeming multiple defendants to be a single party for the purpose of allotting peremptory challenges, the federal statute which granted peremptories violated their Sixth Amendment right to be tried by an impartial jury. The effect of the multiple defendant rule was to give Stilson only half of the peremptories to which a federal defendant would ordinarily be entitled. The Court held that this dilution of the benefit of peremptory challenges did not implicate the constitutional right to an impartial jury: “[tjhere is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which requires the Congress to grant peremptory challenges to defendants in criminal cases.” 250 U.S. at 586, 40 S.Ct. at 30.
The majority unexplainably fails even to mention Stilson in its opinion. Even more puzzling is the majority’s citation of Swain v. Alabama, supra, and Rosales-Lopez v. United States, - U.S. -, 101 S.Ct. 1629, 68 L.Ed.2d 22 (1981) in support of its conclusion. In Swain, the Court, citing Pointer as authority, observed the “long and widely held belief that the peremptory challenge is a necessary part of trial by jury.” 380 U.S. at 219, 85 S.Ct. at 835. In the next sentence of the Swain opinion, however, the Court, quoting Stilson, repeated that nothing in the Constitution requires Congress or the States to grant peremptory challenges. In Rosales-Lopez, the clear message of Stilson and Swain was repeated still again: “there is no Constitutional requirement that peremptory challenges be permitted.” - U.S. at - n.6, 101 S.Ct. at 1634 n.6.
Nor do the two decisions by the Ninth Circuit which are cited by the majority lend any support to its conclusion. Neither United States v. Allsup, 566 F.2d 68 (9th Cir. 1977), nor United States v. Turner, 558 F.2d 535 (9th Cir. 1977), is relevant to the *679issue before us. Both appeals involved the right to peremptory challenges secured by Fed.R.Crim.P. 24; neither raised constitutional questions. Indeed, in Turner, Judge Hufstedler, although acknowledging the importance of peremptory challenges, cited Stilson for the proposition that “[n]either the number of peremptories nor the manner of their exercise is constitutionally secured.” Id. at 538.
The majority states that it does not “hold that the Constitution requires the states to afford criminal defendants a particular number of peremptory challenges . ... ” It would agree, presumably, that a state could provide 10 peremptory challenges by statute without violating the defendant’s “right to assure the empaneling of an impartial jury.” I admit to being puzzled, therefore, as to how that right is denied here, where Hines received 13 peremptory challenges. Obviously Hines had more assurance that an impartial jury would be empaneled than would a defendant in a state which provides 10 peremptory challenges. Defendants in non-capital criminal prosecutions in California are entitled by statute to 13 peremptory challenges, the same number that Hines received. I presume that the majority would not suggest that California defendants in non-capital cases are thereby denied the constitutional right to be tried by an impartial jury.
Nor, finally, do I think that habeas relief can be justified on a theory that peremptory challenges, although not constitutionally required, cannot constitutionally be denied at trial once they are granted by state statute. There is no suggestion here that the trial judge’s denial of the additional peremptories was other than inadvertent, and there was no objection made by defendant’s trial counsel. The majority, by finding a due process violation in these circumstances, sets the stage for the wholesale constitutionalization of the myriad state rules of criminal procedure. For under the majority’s approach, the denial of any state procedural right which — although not constitutionally required — can be deemed important might be held to violate the Due Process Clause. That course, I fear, is likely to impair rather than strengthen the federal courts’ role in protecting the constitutional right of state defendants to a fair trial.

. In Pointer, the defendant objected to the mode of exercising peremptory challenges which the federal trial court imposed. The court required both the defense and prosecution to submit a list of challenges, without knowing how the other had exercised its challenges. The defendant contended that his rights were violated by this procedure because he might use a challenge to strike someone who the government also had challenged. Nothing in the opinion, however, indicates that the defendant or the Supreme Court viewed this as a constitutional question. Rather, the defendant objected to the method of selection on the ground that he “could not know the particular jurors before whom he would be tried until after his [peremptory] challenges, as granted by statutes of the United States, had been exhausted.” 151 U.S. at 408, 14 S.Ct. at 414 (emphasis added).