Court Opinion

ID: 9567390
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:53:26.924123+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:35.475584
License: Public Domain

HOWARD, Judge,
dissenting.
A defendant is not entitled to be tried by any particular jury, but merely by one which is fair and impartial. State v. Thompson, 68 Ariz. 386, 206 P.2d 1037 (1949). Furthermore, a defendant is not entitled to a perfect trial, but only a fair one. A court should be extremely careful when it creates per se rules, rules the violation of which requires no showing of prejudice. In my opinion, the court went astray in Wasko v. Frankel, 116 Ariz. 288, 569 P.2d 230 (1977) when it ignored prior Arizona precedent and held that a right of a party to a peremptory challenge is a substantial right and forcing a party to use a peremptory challenge to strike a juror whom the trial court should have excused for cause results in reversible error.
In Encinas v. State, 26 Ariz. 24, 221 P. 232 (1923), the court, in a similar situation as we have here, refused to reverse saying that the important thing is that it did not appear that an' objectionable juror was forced upon the defendant. It then held *403that there was no reversible error because even though the defendant had to use five of his peremptory challenges to get rid of jurors who should have been excused for cause, the record disclosed that the twelve jurors who did serve were not disqualified and there was, therefore, no prejudicial error.
When did the law change in Arizona? When Wasko was decided? If so, why didn’t Wasko mention Encinas and overrule it? Why go to the law in other jurisdictions, as the court did in Wasko, when we have our own law? Ignoring Encinas doesn’t make it go away. Cases, such as we have here, should be decided on an ad hoc basis and tested for prejudicial error. To follow Wasko is to engage in game-playing since appellant was tried by an impartial jury.