FindLaw > Criminal Law Summaries > United States v. Martinez-Salazar

Case: United States v. Martinez-Salazar

Issue: If the judge in a criminal trial erroneously fails to strike a potential juror for cause and the defense is forced to use peremptory challenge to cure this error, must the conviction be reversed on due process grounds, because the defendant has been denied his full compliment of peremptory strikes allowed by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24?

Facts: At Martinez-Salazar’s trial, the trial judge erroneously failed to strike a potential juror for cause. Martinez-Salazar contended that he felt forced to use up one of his peremptory challenges to strike the potential juror. While he eventually used all of his peremptory challenges, he "never asserted in the District Court that he wished to strike some other juror with the peremptory challenge he used to remove [the potential juror], nor did he question the impartiality of the jury as finally composed." After being convicted, Martinez-Salazar appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which reversed stating that the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause mandated a reversal of the conviction in such a situation whenever the defendant goes on to exhaust his peremptory challenges.

Holding: "[I]f the defendant elects to cure [a trial judge’s erroneous refusal to strike a venireman for cause] by exercising a peremptory challenge, and is subsequently convicted by a jury on which no biased juror sat, he has not been deprived of any rule-based or constitutional right."

Reasoning: Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion for the Court. She explained that while the Sixth Amendment does guarantee an impartial jury, the Constitution does not require reversal of a conviction merely because the defendant felt forced to use one of his peremptory challenges to obtain an impartial jury, citing  Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 88 (1988). As Ross held, peremptory challenges "are not of federal constitutional dimension." She also pointed out, however, that, contrary to the governments’ position, Rule 24 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure does not force a defendant to use a peremptory challenge curatively. Instead, Martinez-Salazar could have let the potential juror sit, and then, after conviction, appealed. "In choosing to remove [the juror] rather than taking his chances on appeal, Martinez-Salazar 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."

Finally, Justice Ginsburg noted that had the trial court deliberately misapplied the law in order to force the defendant to use a peremptory challenge (which was not the case here), reversal would have been required.

Other Opinions: Justice Souter concurred stating, "I write only to suggest that this case does not present the issue whether it is reversible error to refuse to afford a defendant a peremptory challenge beyond the maximum otherwise allowed, when he has used a peremptory challenge to cure an erroneous denial of a challenge for cause and when he shows that he would otherwise use his full complement of peremptory challenges for the noncurative purposes that are the focus of the peremptory right."

Justice Scalia, along with Justice Kennedy, concurred. Scalia explained that he did not join the Court’s opinion because "it unnecessarily pronounces upon the question whether, had respondent not expended his peremptory challenge, he would have been able to complain about the seating of the biased juror. . . . Since he did expend the challenge, that issue is simply not before us."