Sandra Day O'Connor

“ Hearing individual jurors repeat what the judge already knew might still have been helpful: a particular juror's tone of voice or demeanor might have suggested to the trial judge that the juror had formed an opinion about the case and should therefore be excused. I cannot conclude, however, that "content" questions are so indispensable that it violates the Sixth Amendment for a trial court to evaluate a juror's credibility instead by reference to the full range of potentially prejudicial information that has been reported. ”

“ Little interaction may be required to make an individual determination that a juror has the willingness and the ability to set aside any preconceived ideas about the evidence in the case or the guilt or innocence of the defendant. A trial judge might choose to ask about the content of the publicity the juror has encountered, and this knowledge could help in deciding whether the juror's claim of impartiality should be accepted. ”

“ Our willingness to accord substantial deference to a trial court's finding of juror impartiality rests on our expectation that the trial court will conduct a sufficient voir dire to determine the credibility of a juror professing to be impartial. ”

“ Our cases recognize that, under certain circumstances, exposure to particularly inflammatory publicity creates so strong a presumption of prejudice that "the jurors' claims that they can be impartial should not be believed." ”

“ The majority's reasoning is unacceptable. When a prospective juror has been exposed to prejudicial pretrial publicity, a trial court cannot realistically assess the juror's impartiality without first establishing what the juror already has learned about the case. The procedures employed in this case were wholly insufficient to eliminate the risk that two-thirds of Mu'Min's jury entered the jury box predisposed against him. ”

“ An individual exposed to publicity qualitatively akin to the publicity at issue in Irvin and Rideau is necessarily disqualified from jury service no matter how earnestly he professes his impartiality. [2] But unless the trial court asks a prospective juror exactly what he has read or heard about a case, the court will not be able to determine whether the juror comes within this class. ”

“ The Court is correct that asking content questions in front of the other jurors may do more harm than good. Further, I agree with Justice O'CONNOR that any need for content questioning disappears if the trial judge evaluating juror impartiality assumes a worst-case hypothesis that the jurors have read or seen all of the pretrial publicity. ”

“ While the majority carefully avoids any discussion of the specific nature of the pretrial publicity, it is impossible to assess fairly Mu'Min's claim without first examining precisely what was written about the case prior to trial.
On September 22, 1988, Gladys Nopwasky was stabbed to death in the retail carpet and flooring store she owned in Dale City, Virginia. Several weeks later, Mu'Min, an inmate serving a 48-year sentence for first-degree murder, was indicted for murdering Nopwasky. ”

“ We think that it would be far more injurious to permit it to be thought that persons entertaining a disqualifying prejudice were allowed to serve as jurors and that inquiries designed to elicit the fact of disqualification were barred. ”

“ As Justice O'CONNOR has observed, an individual "juror may have an interest in concealing his own bias . . . [or] may be unaware of it." Smith v. Phillips, 455 U.S. 209, 221-222, 102 S.Ct. 940, 948, 71 L.Ed.2d 78 (1982) (concurring opinion) . "Natural human pride would suggest a negative answer to whether there was a reason the juror could not be fair and impartial." United States v. Dellinger, 472 F.2d 340, 375 (CA7 1972) ; compare Irvin v. ”

“ Shortly after the charges against Mu'Min became public, the state official in charge of administering both corrections and highway programs issued a public apology. Id., at 927. Not satisfied, a number of area residents wrote editorials demanding that all state officials responsible for the inmate work-release program be fired, id., at 930, 931, 937, 974, and area leaders pushed for increased controls on inmate-release programs, see id., at 933, 935, 936, 958. ”

“ This Court has long and repeatedly recognized that exposure to pretrial publicity may undermine a defendant's Sixth Amendment guarantee to trial by an impartial jury. E.g., Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961) ; Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963) ; Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966) ; Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794, 95 S.Ct. 2031, 44 L.Ed.2d 589 (1975) ; Patton v. Yount, 467 U.S. 1025, 104 S.Ct. 2885, 81 L.Ed.2d 847 (1984) . ”