Litigation

Improper Timing of Peremptory Strikes Causes Mistrial

By Robert W. Kelley, Esq.

A civil trial on the West Coast of Florida ended in a “mistrial” today when both sides agreed that the Court committed error during the jury selection process by requiring the parties to exercise their peremptory strikes before having an opportunity to view the entire panel from which the jury would ultimately be selected. This is a common procedural mistake made by many trial judges. The law, however, on this issue is clear, and was properly argued by the Defendant’s in their Motion for Mistrial: “the only fair [jury selection] scheme is to allow the parties to exercise their challenges … so that, before a party exercises a peremptory challenge, he has before him the full panel from which the challenge is to be made” — a panel that does not include “those excess persons over the number of needed jurors plus the number of allowable peremptories … after challenges for cause are made.” Two memorandums of law on this issue were added to the Jury Blog today on the Memorandums of Law page.

Full post as published by The Florida Jury Selection Blog on October 06, 2010 (boomark / email).