Court Opinion

ID: 9719526
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:55:20.276798+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:16.381223
License: Public Domain

POCHE, J.
I concur in affirming the judgment; however, I cannot join the majority’s analysis of the jury selection issue. Unlike my colleagues I believe we have an obligation to consider and to resolve the question of whether the trial court here had the power to reopen the jury to challenge after Mr. Moulden was seated on the panel.
The majority assumes, without deciding the question, that the trial court still had discretion to permit reopening challenges to the jury at the time the court denied the defense requests to exercise its remaining peremptories. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 1562.) The question is pivotal; what we are really deciding is whether the jury was completed and double jeopardy had attached. While a double jeopardy claim is not being raised by this defendant, the specter of a double jeopardy claim looms every time a trial judge must rule on such a request.
If we as an appellate court duck the question of whether the trial court may properly reopen voir dire we create a quandary for trial judges: they must either decide to play it safe, deny the defendant’s request and assume that at worse an appellate court may reverse for retrial. Or, if they grant the request to reopen voir dire and an appellate court subsequently tells them the ruling was wrong, then the defendant, otherwise properly convicted, must be released rather than be subjected to double jeopardy on retrial. In either case the People lose. At the least they pay for the cost of lost prosecutorial and judicial time. At the most they are subjected to the release of a guilty defendant into the community.
Having insisted that we ought to reach the question of whether the court still had the power to reopen challenges to the jury, I answer that it did.
Jeopardy attaches when the jury has been “empaneled and sworn.” (Crist v. Bretz (1978) 437 U.S. 28 [57 L.Ed.2d 24, 98 S.Ct. 2156].) The rationale for this rule “lies in the need to protect the interest of an accused in retaining a chosen jury.” (Id. at p. 35 [57 L.Ed.2d at p. 31].) Presumably a *1566similar rationale underlies Penal Code section 1088 which provides “each party shall be entitled to have the panel full before exercising any peremptory challenge.” Because California allows the court on a showing of cause to permit challenge to a juror after he is sworn but before the jury is completed (Pen. Code, § 1068), the state concept of jury completion is equivalent to the federal “‘empaneled and sworn’” formula. (In re Mendes (1979) 23 Cal.3d 847, 854-855 [153 Cal.Rptr. 831, 592 P.2d 318].)
“The general rule is that where a court has indicated that a trial will be conducted with alternate jurors the impanelment of the jury is not deemed complete until the alternates are selected and sworn. [Citation.]” (In re Mendes, supra, 23 Cal.3d at p. 853.) Whether there will be alternate jurors and if so how many are discretionary decisions of the trial court. (Pen. Code, § 1089; People v. Armendariz (1984) 37 Cal.3d 573, 580, fn. 6 [209 Cal.Rptr. 664, 693 P.2d 243].) Furthermore, the court retains “the right to change its mind” on the question of alternates and their number. (In re Mendes, supra, 23 Cal.3d at p. 854; People v. Hess (1951) 107 Cal.App.2d 407, 424-426 [237 P.2d 568].)
In this case the trial judge was making two discretionary decisions: would he proceed to trial without selecting an alternate juror to replace Mr. Moulden and would he reopen to challenge the panel as newly constituted with Mr. Moulden sitting as juror number six. The two decisions were intimately linked. Once the court decided not to select a new alternate the jury was completed and jeopardy attached. Until it made that decision, however, the jury was not completed and the court retained the power to reopen the panel to challenge.
Thus, the question before us should be was it reversible error for the trial court to deny defendant’s request to reopen the jury to challenge? In People v. Armendariz, supra, 37 Cal.3d 573, our Supreme Court found that a trial court Which refused to reopen jury selection before the jury had been completed under the mistaken belief that it lacked the authority to do so under section 1068 had not made an “informed exercise of discretion.” (At p. 581.) Armendariz concluded that the ruling would have been an abuse of discretion under the circumstances of that case. (Ibid.) The circumstances then set out in Armendariz included the fact that it was a death penalty case where defendant had been precluded from using over two-thirds of his challenges. (Id. at pp. 582-583.)
Here, too, the trial court acted in the belief that there was “no authority” for reopening jury selection. Under Armendariz then this court’s decision to deny the defense motion was not an informed exercise of discretion. However, I cannot say that the ruling was also an abuse of discretion such as to *1567require reversal. I do not read Armendariz as creating a per se rule that denial of a motion to reopen jury selection is always reversible error.
All of this is not to say that the trial court could not reasonably have ruled the other way. Defendant presented a legitimate reason to reopen the jury to challenge. It was within the power of the trial court to permit reopening. The decision of the court to grant or to deny the motion was a discretionary one. I cannot say that under the circumstances before it the trial court abused its discretion to deny the motion to reopen the jury to challenge. Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority.