Court Opinion

ID: 9543536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:46:20.927753+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:32.805717
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(concurring in the result):
I concur with Justice Durham’s opinion in all respects except one. Her opinion holds that a juror may be impeached for giving an incorrect answer to a question on voir dire if the “correct response would have provided either a valid basis for a challenge for cause or ... the non-disclosure itself prevented the juror from serving as a fair, impartial factfinder.” To prove the latter alternative, the defendant “would have to be able to submit evidence of juror misconduct during deliberations.” Although the law should certainly provide a remedy if a juror gives an incorrect answer on voir dire that calls the juror’s qualification to sit into question, I disagree that a jury verdict should be impeachable on the basis of what was said during the jury’s deliberations.
Justice Durham notes in footnote 2 that affidavits may not be used to impeach a jury verdict by showing harassment, pressure, or intimidation of one or several jurors by other jurors. That long-standing rule anchors the sanctity of jury verdicts, is eminently sound, and ought to be applied in this case. Justice Durham, however, states, without the benefit of any authority, “Where the pressure is based on the other jurors’ improper use of a juror’s misconduct during voir dire, the rule should be different_” See note 2.
Although there certainly are occasions when the rule against impeaching a juror’s verdict by conduct that occurs during jury deliberations may seem illogical in a particular instance, on balance it seems to me that the long-established policy of the law to keep jury deliberations both secret and sacrosanct ought to be observed. In my view, the rule formulated by Justice Durham would undermine that policy. For that reason, I am not able to subscribe to it.
Nevertheless, I agree that the verdict in this case should be reversed. The questions put to the jurors which were incorrectly answered were clearly material and potentially of great importance to an attorney’s making a rational decision as to how to exercise peremptory challenges. Although it is true that the answers, if truly given, may not have been a ground for a challenge for cause, peremptory challenges are nonetheless an essential and important part of choosing a jury. State v. Worthen, 765 P.2d 839 (Utah 1988). The oath that veniremen take to answer truthfully the questions asked on voir dire is every bit as *250binding with respect to questions that go to for-cause disqualifications as to questions that may be important with respect to peremptory challenges. Here, the questions called for answers that ordinarily would have provided a fair and strong basis for removing a venireman from the panel. Certainly not all voir dire questions should be the basis for a reversal if incorrectly answered. However, I believe that the questions in this case were of such a nature that the incorrect answers provide a valid basis under the circumstances for requiring a new trial. For that reason, I concur in the result reached by Justice Durham.