Court Opinion

ID: 9782855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:25:03.290388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:12.102173
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(dissenting). This case seems to me to raise a single issue: Is five minutes of lawyer-conducted voir dire per side too *115little time, as a matter of law, for the first round of jury selection in a felony case? I would answer that question no. The majority does not address it, but answers another question, one I do not think is preserved in this record.
After conducting her own voir dire of the first-round panelists, the trial judge gave each counsel five minutes to question them. After they had done so, defense counsel asked “to put on the record my objection to the time limit.” He made clear that the objection was one he had made to the same judge before, in other cases: “I tried cases before you in supreme court and criminal court. My objection isn’t something new to you, but I need to make it nevertheless.” Counsel then spoke about the importance of peremptory challenges and the need for a “fair opportunity to question jurors.” He said that he had found “no case where only five minutes was allowed in the first round of voir dire, particularly a Class B violent felony or any other felony.” He relied on a mathematical calculation: “Sixteen jurors in the box and five minutes to speak with them averages to less than 20 seconds per [prospective] juror.”
Counsel made no criticism of the judge’s voir dire, and acknowledged it was “thorough,” but stressed that his job as an advocate was different from the judge’s. He summarized by saying: “[M]y objection is that your time limit here in this case violates the defendant’s statutory right to exercise preliminary challenges and violates his rights under the state and federal constitution.” At the end of his argument, counsel briefly mentioned the circumstances of the present case, saying that he “used up four out of my five minutes” in questions of individual jurors and was forced to omit some subjects he would have covered with the group.
It is clear to me that counsel was making a generic objection to the five minute time limit, though he illustrated his argument by referring to the case at hand. He was saying that, at least in the first round of a felony case, where 12 jurors may be selected and that number of panelists or more — 16 in this case— are being interviewed, five minutes is just not enough time for a lawyer to talk to them. The argument is not an unreasonable one, but I would reject the per se rule that defendant asked for.
CPL 270.15 (1) (c) says, in relevant part:
“The court shall permit both parties ... to examine the prospective jurors, individually or collectively, *116regarding their qualifications to serve as jurors. Each party shall be afforded a fair opportunity to question the prospective jurors as to any unexplored matter affecting their qualifications, but the court shall not permit questioning that is repetitious or irrelevant, or questions as to a juror’s knowledge of rules of law.”
The question here is whether, by limiting defendant to five minutes in the first round, the trial court denied him “a fair opportunity to question the prospective jurors as to any unexplored matter affecting their qualifications.” What amounts to “a fair opportunity” is to be decided by the trial court in its discretion (People v Jean, 75 NY2d 744 [1989]). In Jean, we held that a trial court did not abuse its discretion by limiting counsel to 15 minutes in each of the first two rounds, and 10 minutes in the third.
So long as the trial court allows some appreciable time for lawyer questioning — and five minutes is appreciably more than zero — I would not hold as a matter of law that any minimum number of minutes is necessary. A lawyer who thinks more time is needed to “question the prospective jurors as to any unexplored matter” should tell the court what the “unexplored matter” is; in this case, defense counsel identified no subject not covered in the trial court’s own “thorough” questioning. If he had done so, the judge might well have given him more than five minutes.
In exercising its discretion to keep lawyers on a very short leash during voir dire, the trial court implicitly recognized two important facts of courtroom life: Time is precious, and lawyers questioning prospective jurors waste a lot of it. Lawyer-conducted voir dire no doubt has its value, but it is a very inefficient process, as lawyers understandably try to get to know as well as they possibly can each human being who might serve on the jury. The Legislature’s purpose in enacting CPL 270.15 (1) (c) was to avoid such waste of time by “instructing the court to maintain tight control over voir dire questioning” (Preiser, Practice Commentaries, McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 11A, CPL 270.15, at 276 [2002 ed])—a practice we had previously encouraged (People v Boulware, 29 NY2d 135, 140 [1971]). I believe we would best serve the legislative goal by not requiring any arbitrary minimum for lawyer-conducted voir dire.
Today’s majority does not suggest that it disagrees. Indeed, it disapproves of rules “that can be applied across-the-board in all *117cases” in this area (majority op at 110). Yet it reverses defendant’s conviction on a ground that defendant never presented to the trial court: that the special circumstances of this case rendered the five minute limit too strict — especially in the third round of jury selection, where an unusual number of people who had been, or whose relatives had been, crime victims appeared as prospective jurors.
The majority may be right about this, but I do not see why defendant should be excused from preserving the argument. He could have said to the trial judge, essentially, everything the majority now says, but he said none of it. He never suggested that he needed more time in the third round to ask about the crimes of which panelists or their family members had been victims; indeed, he made no objection to the time limit during the third round of jury selection. He did not say, at any stage of the voir dire, that the victim’s modest fame, or any other fact unique to this case, made lengthier questioning appropriate. If he had said that, perhaps the trial judge would have agreed with him. But he preserved only a generic objection to the time limit. Since I think that objection should fail, I would affirm.
Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Ciparick, Pigott and Jones concur with Judge Graffeo; Judge Smith dissents and votes to affirm in a separate opinion in which Judge Read concurs.
Order reversed, etc.