Challenges for Cause

Challenges for Cause

Voir dire exists to bring a prospective juror's attitudes into the open, and the challenge for cause is the first tool that converts what the examination reveals into a removal. A challenge for cause is a party's request that the judge disqualify a prospective juror for a specified reason, such as bias or prejudice.¹ The reason ties back to the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of an impartial jury. A juror is not impartial when the juror's state of mind about the issues or the parties would substantially impair performance as a juror in accordance with the court's instructions on the law, and a venireperson whose responses demonstrate that kind of partiality is excused for cause.² The substantial impairment test is therefore the working standard for this tool.

The grounds that qualify fall into recognizable families. A juror who is related to a party by blood or marriage, or tied to one by business as a creditor, debtor, employer, or employee, should be excluded for cause, and so should a juror who is prejudiced on an issue or against a party.³ The judge decides each challenge and excludes the juror if cause is found, and a party may ordinarily challenge any number of jurors for cause.⁴ The older vocabulary adds a useful distinction about how much a ground proves. A principal challenge rests on facts that support a conclusive presumption of bias, so the juror is disqualified automatically, whereas a challenge to the favor rests on facts that tend to show bias without compelling disqualification, so the judge must weigh them.⁵ A ground that conclusively presumes bias therefore ends the inquiry by itself, while facts that only suggest bias leave the judge to decide whether the juror can still be fair.

A removal for cause needs a reason the judge accepts because the tool carries an incentive problem. Each side prefers a panel inclined toward its own position, so if a party could dismiss any juror simply by calling the juror biased, the label would become a way to compose a favorable jury. Placing the decision with the judge, who has no stake in the verdict, and tying the ground to the juror's ability to follow the instructions, keeps the tool aimed at the guarantee it serves. The same structure explains why the standard is demanding. A cause ruling removes a citizen from service on a finding of disqualifying partiality, so doubt that falls short of that finding does not carry the challenge.

The judge's position also explains the deference the ruling receives. The judge watches the juror answer, and tone and hesitation do not survive on a transcript, so the court has considerable discretion in deciding whether to excuse an individual juror for cause.⁶ If the judge keeps a juror over objection, the issue can be raised on appeal from the final judgment, and the question on review is whether the ruling was an abuse of discretion.⁷ A party who complains that the court wrongly refused a cause challenge also usually must have used all of its peremptory challenges to show prejudice.⁸

The death-penalty qualification rule shows the standard at work. The same substantial-impairment test governs a capital case, where it is applied to a juror's views on capital punishment: a prospective juror whose opposition to the death penalty would prevent or substantially impair the performance of the juror's duties may be excused for cause.⁹ The line sits at impairment rather than at opinion because everyone brings views into a courtroom, and impartiality asks whether the juror can decide under the court's instructions. A juror can hold strong feelings and still do that. A juror who would vote against death automatically, whatever the evidence, cannot perform the weighing that a capital sentencing decision requires. Excusing a juror who only has reservations but can follow the law would remove someone fully able to do the job and tilt the panel.

The usual error in a capital case is to treat reservations about the death penalty as if they were disqualifying. The test asks about impairment of duty, so a juror's moral discomfort matters only to the extent it would prevent or substantially impair the juror from following the law. Once the juror says the law can be followed and the evidence weighed, and the judge accepts that answer, the cause standard is unmet. A party who still distrusts the juror must then turn to a peremptory challenge.

The peremptory challenge exists for that situation, and the contrast with cause shows why both tools are needed. A cause challenge rests on reason to doubt the juror's impartiality, while a peremptory challenge needs no justification and may rest on a hunch.¹⁰ Challenges for cause are not by themselves adequate to ensure an impartial jury, because a juror may be suspected of partiality and still refuse to admit it or fail to recognize it.¹¹ Peremptories therefore reach jurors who might be biased yet not so obviously as to sustain a challenge for cause, along with jurors viewed as less likely to be favorable than the alternatives.¹² Such a challenge may ordinarily be "exercised without a reason stated, without inquiry, and without being subject to the court's control."¹³ The exception is the equal protection limit developed in Batson v. Kentucky and the cases that followed it, taught later in this chapter. Even there the contrast with cause holds, because once a challenger makes the required showing, the explanation the striking party must give need not rise to the level that would justify a challenge for cause.¹⁴

Doubt that falls short of cause is exactly what the peremptory challenge covers, and the next section takes up how Rule 24(b) allots those challenges.