Court Opinion

ID: 9755623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:44:39.482052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:09.662489
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
dissenting.
I wholeheartedly agree with the majority that the trial court erred when it found Juror # 54 qualified to sit as a juror and overruled Appellant’s motion to excuse Juror # 54 for cause. Unlike the majority, which bases its reversal on the premise that the trial court’s error “forced” Appellant to exercise a peremptory challenge to remove Juror # 54, however, I believe the most important — and ultimately, in my view, dispositive — fact in this case is that Juror #54 did not sit on the jury that determined Appellant’s guilt. By exercising a peremptory challenge to remove Juror # 54, Appellant “did not lose a peremptory challenge. Rather, he used the challenge in line with a principal reason for peremptories: to help secure the constitutional guarantee of trial by an impartial jury.” 1 Here, a fair and impartial jury deliberated the evidence and found Appellant guilty. Accordingly, I do not believe that the trial court’s error affected Appellant’s substantial rights,2 and I would affirm the judgment of the McCracken Circuit Court.
In my dissenting opinion in Stopher v. Commonwealth,3 I expressed my opinion that this Court should overrule Thomas v. Commonwealth,4 reject the notion that automatic reversible error exists whenever a defendant exercises a peremptory challenge to remove a juror whom the trial court erroneously failed to remove for cause, and subject such allegations of error to harmless error review. Although, at that time, I expressed my intention to follow this Court’s precedent until a majority of the Court elects to adopt my view,51 now realize that I cannot fulfill my oath of office by closing my eyes, reversing a jury verdict that resulted from a fair trial, and *375remanding the case for another fair trial. As even more courts have embraced the view that errors of this type do not require automatic reversal,6 I again suggest that this Court “reexamine its decisional law concerning peremptory challenges used to excuse jurors whom the trial court has erroneously failed to excuse for cause ... [and] bring Kentucky law in accordance with the prevailing federal jurisprudence.” 7
Because I find no reversible error in either the issue addressed in the majority opinion or the other issues Appellant raises, I would affirm the judgment of the McCracken Circuit Court.
GRAVES and WINTERSHEIMER, JJ., join this dissenting opinion.

. United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. 304, 315-316, 120 S.Ct. 774, 781-2, 145 L.Ed.2d 792 (2000).

. RCr 9.24

. Ky., 57 S.W.3d 787, 813-818 (2001) (Keller, J., dissenting).

. Ky., 864 S.W.2d 252 (1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1177, 114 S.Ct. 1218, 127 L.Ed.2d 564 (1994).

. Stopher v. Commonwealth, supra note 3 at 808.

. See State v. Lindell, 245 Wis.2d 689, 629 N.W.2d 223 (2001); State v. Fire, 145 Wash.2d 152, 34 P.3d 1218 (2001).

. Stopher v. Commonwealth, supra note 3 at 817.