473 U.S. 913 | SCOTUS | 1985
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
Petitioner was charged with the brutal beating and shooting of a woman and her two young daughters in Duval County, Florida. The murders and petitioner’s arrest were the subject of enormous pretrial publicity in the Duval County area. The major local newspapers carried numerous stories on the crime and the details of petitioner’s arrest, and many minutes of prime-time news coverage were devoted to the subject. Among the specific and prejudicial facts disclosed by this pretrial publicity were that petitioner had failed a lie detector test, that he had a history of violent crime, that he was on parole at the time of his arrest, that he had admitted being in the victim’s home around the time of the murders, and that particular pieces of evidence appeared to link petitioner to the crimes.
Based on the substantial showing of prejudicial pretrial publicity he had made, petitioner moved for a change of venue. Attached to this motion were affidavits from 15 Duval County attorneys who believed the extent and nature of the pretrial publicity would make it impossible for petitioner to receive a fair and impartial jury in Duval County. Petitioner also moved for individual and sequestered voir dire, and the trial judge deferred ruling on the change-of-venue motion until after voir dire was completed. During voir dire, at least 10 of the 40 veniremen admitted having prior knowledge about the case. The trial judge, however, re
Petitioner argues that the refusal to grant individual voir dire in the circumstances of this case violated his Sixth Amendment right to a fair and impartial jury. I recognize that “exposure to information about a state defendant’s prior convictions or to news accounts of the crime with which he is charged [does not] alone presumptively depriv[e] the defendant of due process.” Murphy v. Florida, 421 U. S. 794, 799 (1975). “It is sufficient if the juror can lay aside his impression or opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court.” Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S. 717, 723 (1961). The question here, however, is not whether the jury actually was biased against petitioner, but whether he was unconstitutionally deprived of the opportunity to uncover such bias and to exercise his for-cause challenges to root it out. The right to an impartial jury encompasses the right to take reasonable steps designed to insure that the jury is impartial. See, e. g., Groppi v. Wisconsin, 400 U. S. 505 (1971); Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U. S. 333 (1966); Aldridge v. United States, 283 U. S. 308 (1931); see also Ham v. South Carolina, 409 U. S. 524, 532 (1973) (opinion of Marshall, J.). Moreover, the informed exercise of jury challenges is an essential element in insuring jury impartiality. Indeed, the first Justice Harlan, speaking for a unanimous Court, called the right to challenge “one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused” and concluded that “[a]ny system for the empanelling of a jury that prevents or embarrasses the full, unrestricted exercise by the accused of that right, must be condemned.” Pointer v. United States, 151 U. S. 396, 408 (1894); see also Lewis v. United States, 146 U. S. 370, 376 (1892); Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U. S. 356, 379 (1972) (opinion of Powell, J.).
This Court has not addressed whether, and upon what threshold showing, individual voir dire is constitutionally required to guarantee a defendant’s right to “have sufficient information brought out on voir dire to enable him to exercise his challenges in a rea
In this case, there can be little doubt of the extensive publicity the triple murder and petitioner’s arrest received. Much of this information was prejudicial. Four members of the petit jury acknowledged their exposure to at least some of this material, but because the trial judge denied individual voir dire, defense counsel was effectively precluded from learning the nature of their pretrial knowledge or its potential effect on their impartiality, and from intelligently exercising his challenges. Apparently viewing petitioner’s constitutional claim as one of state law only, the State Supreme Court concluded in a short paragraph that the refusal to grant individual voir dire was not an “abuse of discretion.”
The state court noted that, once the jury had been selected, petitioner was “satisfied” with it. 461 So. 2d 67, 69 (1984). This statement was made in the context of rejecting petitioner’s appeal from the denial of his venue motion; after rejecting this venue challenge, the state court went on to address the merits of the asserted right to individual voir dire.
Lead Opinion
Sup. Ct. Fla. Certiorari denied.