Peremptory challenge

“ In such a case the power to provide by rule of court was to be regarded as excepted from the provisions of the act of 1840.
But, in giving by statute the right of peremptory challenge to the government in certain cases, it does not necessarily affect the exercise of the power of the government to challenge in this qualified manner. A conditional or qualified right of challenge is not inconsistent with the existence of the right of peremptory challenge given by statute. ”

“ The voir dire in American trials tends to be extensive and probing, operating as a predicate for the exercise of peremptories, and the process of selecting a jury protracted. [25] The persistence of peremptories and their extensive use demonstrate the long and widely held belief that peremptory challenge is a necessary part of trial by jury. ”

“ The peremptory challenge is "as Blackstone says, an arbitrary and capricious right; and it must be exercised with full freedom, or it fails of its full purpose." Lewis v. United States, 146 U.S. 370, 378, 13 S.Ct. ”

“ Plausible arguments can be made for many erroneous propositions, but that does not make them any less wrong. Moreover, Justice STEVENS clearly demonstrates that invocations of our "venerable" peremptory challenge system are insufficient to defeat Holland's claims. ”

“ The only effect of allowing the plaintiff six peremptory challenges was to put three additional men upon the jury, which the defendant could not challenge, and if it had exhausted its peremptory challenges it might perhaps claim to have been prejudiced by the fact that three men had been put upon the jury which it was not entitled to challenge ”

“ To the contrary, an independent cause of action on the juror's part is quite incompatible with the opinion's repeated insistence that the stricken juror must be of the same race as the defendant. It would be absurd to suppose that a black juror has a right not to be discriminated against, through peremptory strike, in the trial of a black defendant, but not in the trial of a white defendant.
In sum, we have never held, or even said, that a juror has an equal protection right not to be excluded from a particular case through peremptory challenge ”

“ To bar petitioner's claim because his race differs from that of the excluded jurors would be to condone the arbitrary exclusion of citizens from the duty, honor, and privilege of jury service. In Holland and Batson, we spoke of the significant role peremptory challenges play in our trial procedures, but we noted also that the utility of the peremptory challenge system must be accommodated to the command of racial neutrality. ”

“ Peremptory challenges are permitted only when the government, by statute or decisional law, deems it appropriate to allow parties to exclude a given number of persons who otherwise would satisfy the requirements for service on the petit jury. ”

“ As we have outlined here, a private party could not exercise its peremptory challenges absent the overt, significant assistance of the court. The government summons jurors, constrains their freedom of movement, and subjects them to public scrutiny and examination. The party who exercises a challenge invokes the formal authority of the court, which must discharge the prospective juror, thus effecting the "final and practical denial" of the excluded individual's opportunity to serve on the petit jury. ”

“ A prosecutor's wrongful exclusion of a juror by a race-based peremptory challenge is a constitutional violation committed in open court at the outset of the proceedings. The overt wrong, often apparent to the entire jury panel, casts doubt over the obligation of the parties, the jury, and indeed the court to adhere to the law throughout the trial of the cause. The voir dire phase of the trial represents the "jurors' first introduction to the substantive factual and legal issues in a case." ”

“ Naturally the challenge for cause may or may not be allowed by the judge—the form being, "Your Honor, I ask you to excuse Mr. Smith,"—because the lawyers are more careful in attempting them; for if they are not allowed the juror challenged may be small-minded enough to retain a grudge against the counsel. The sure challenges are the peremptory ones without any cause stated or reason given. The number of peremptory challenges for each side is usually six. As soon as a juror is challenged he steps out of the box and the clerk draws a new name from the wheel. ”

“ In treason and felony, the prisoner is allowed the privilege of a limited number of peremptory challenges; after which, as in misdemeanours, there is no limit to the number of challenges, if the party shows some cause for each challenge to the court. This cause is tried by persons appointed for that purpose by the court, when no jurymen have been sworn; but when two jurymen have been sworn, they are the parties who must adjudicate upon the qualifications of those who are afterwards challenged, who, except when the challenge is propter delictum, may be themselves examined upon oath. ”

“ In holding that a race-neutral reason for a peremptory challenge means a reason other than race, we do not resolve the more difficult question of the breadth with which the concept of race should be defined for equal protection purposes. We would face a quite different case if the prosecutor had justified his peremptory challenges with the explanation that he did not want Spanish-speaking jurors. ”

“ All qualified citizens have a civic right, of course, to serve as jurors, but none has the right to serve as a juror in a particular case. Otherwise, we would have to permit stricken jurors to complain not only of peremptory challenges that supposedly deny them equal protection, but also of erroneously allowed challenges for cause.
To affirm that the Equal Protection Clause applies to strikes of individual jurors is effectively to abolish the peremptory challenge. As discussed in Swain, "irrelevant" personal characteristics are by definition the basis for using that device ”

“ To be sure, the Court was referring to exclusion of prospective jurors from venires, not their exclusion from petit juries by means of peremptory challenges. But the particular context does not affect the analysis. A defendant's interest in obtaining the "commonsense judgment of the community" is impaired by the exclusion from his jury of a significant segment of the community; whether the exclusion is accomplished in the selection of the venire or by peremptory challenge is immaterial. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S., at 86, 106 S.Ct., at 1717. ”

“ To give the prisoner the opportunity of seeing the faces, as well as of hearing the names, of the men who are to try him, in order that he may object to any whom he may suppose to be prejudiced against him. If he please, he may challenge the whole number summoned by the sheriff. This is called a ‘challenge to the array;’ objections to single jurymen are called, ‘challenges to the polls.’ These latter are of two kinds—peremptory challenges, when no reason is given, and challenges for cause. ”

“ Conceding that the great weight of authority supports the proposition of the defendant, we are still of opinion that it is not entitled to take advantage of it, inasmuch as it made but two peremptory challenges, waiving its right to a third, and thereby acquiesced in the composition of the jury. ”

“ We have hitherto taken it for granted that legal principles are necessarily inflexible—that they are essentially peremptory rules excluding judicial discretion so far as they extend—that they must of necessity be followed blindly by courts of justice even against their better judgment. ”

“ Such flexible principles are not unknown even at the present day, and it seems probable that in the more perfect system of the future much law that is now rigid and peremptory will lapse into the category of the conditional. ”

“ Preemption is itself a special privilege, only authorized by its supposed public benefit in promoting the settlement and cultivation of vacant territory and in rewarding the enterprise of the persons upon whom the privilege is bestowed. "Preemption rights," as declared by the Supreme Court of the United States, "are founded in an enlightened public policy, rendered necessary by the enterprise of our citizens. The adventurous pioneer, who is found in advance of our settlements, encounters many hardships, and not unfrequently dangers from savage incursions. ”

“ But an inspection of this record does not disclose that by any request to charge, or otherwise, any advantage was sought to be taken of the unconstitutionality of the act other than is found in the request for the peremptory instruction to acquit the accused. ”

“ Finally, the goal of ensuring that no distinctive group be excluded from full participation in our criminal justice system is impaired when the prosecutor implies, through the use of racially motivated peremptory challenges, that he does not trust Afro-Americans to be fair enough or intelligent enough to serve on the case he is trying. Id., at 87, 106 S.Ct., at 1718. That the juror may eventually be seated on a jury in another case is immaterial ”

“ Nothing short of the placing in proper hands a peremptory authority for the removal of what is hurtful, and the supply of what is defective, making the exercise of that authority a duty, can remedy the existing evils. ”

“ We must decide in the case before us whether a private litigant in a civil case may use peremptory challenges to exclude jurors on account of their race. Recognizing the impropriety of racial bias in the courtroom, we hold the race-based exclusion violates the equal protection rights of the challenged jurors. ”

“ But when the legislature, in an effort to prevent any inquiry of the validity of a particular statute, so burdens any challenge thereof in the courts that the party affected is necessarily constrained to submit rather than take the chances of the penalties imposed, then it becomes a serious question whether the party is not deprived of the equal protection of the laws. ”

“ Does the policy of the pre-emption law authorize a stranger to thrust these men out of their houses, seize their improvements, and settle exactly where they were settled, and by these acts acquire the initiatory right of pre-emption? ”

“ He added, however: 'From what has thus been said, it is not to be inferred that this power of limitation or regulation is itself without limit. This power to regulate is not a power to destroy; and limitation is not the equivalent of confiscation. ”

“ To burden the exercise of a constitutional right with conditions which materially impair its value, or which, practically, compel the abandonment of the right rather than to submit to the conditions, is, in law, an infringement of that right. ”

“ The motion for peremptory reversal pursuant to MCR 7.211 (C) (4) is denied for failure to persuade the Court of the existence of manifest error requiring reversal and warranting peremptory relief without argument or formal submission. ”

“ We have never invoked the fair-cross-section principle to invalidate the use of either for-cause or peremptory challenges to prospective jurors, or to require petit juries, as opposed to jury panels or venires, to reflect the composition of the community at large. ”

“ Be this as it may, a court is likely to lose its way if it strays outside the modest bounds of its own special competence and turns the duty of adjudicating only the legal phases of a broad social problem into an opportunity for formulating judgments of social policy quite beyond its competence as well as its authority. ”

“ The case is one peculiarly for the application of the rule that equity, in the exercise of its inherent power to do justice between parties, will, when justice demands it, refuse relief, even if the time elapsed without suit is less than that prescribed by the statute of limitations. ”

“ The barriers to a suit by an excluded juror are daunting. Potential jurors are not parties to the jury selection process and have no opportunity to be heard at the time of their exclusion. Nor can excluded jurors easily obtain declaratory or injunctive relief when discrimination occurs through an individual prosecutor's exercise of peremptory challenges. ”

“ Remedies of a statutory character, where the right to be enforced was unknown at the common law, are to be followed with strictness, both as to the methods to be pursued and the cases to which they are to be applied. ”

“ Of course, there is no objection to legislation being confined to a peculiar and well-defined class of perils, and it is not necessary that they should be perils which are shared by the public, if they concern the body of citizens engaged in a particular work. ”

“ It must be remembered that 'it is not enough that there is a remedy at law; it must be plain and adequate, or, in other words, as practical and efficient to the ends of justice and its prompt administration as the remedy in equity.' Boyce's Ex'rs v. ”

“ To permit this would be opposed to justice and equity, and to the whole policy of the law. If twenty-eight years will not bar such a claim, what lapse of time will bar it? or is it to be perpetual? The general mischiefs of such a doctrine are abvious. ”

“ But the court said the law 'presumes every man is sane, and the burden of showing it is not true is upon the party who asserts it. The responsibility of overturning that presumption, that the law recognizes as one that is universal, is with the party who sets it up as a defense. ”

“ But, as we accept and apply the rule, despite those objections, we can find no justification for an exception which is inconsistent both with the rule itself and the underlying policy which has created and perpetuated it. ”