{"id":4094,"date":"2009-03-06T19:25:01","date_gmt":"2009-03-07T00:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=4094"},"modified":"2009-03-06T19:25:01","modified_gmt":"2009-03-07T00:25:01","slug":"seventh-circuit-week-in-review-can-a-defendant-waive-the-right-to-an-impartial-jury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/03\/seventh-circuit-week-in-review-can-a-defendant-waive-the-right-to-an-impartial-jury\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Week in Review: Can a Defendant Waive the Right to an Impartial Jury?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Seventh Circuit had three new opinions in criminal cases in the past week.\u00a0 The court also withdrew, without explanation,<\/em> <\/a>its opinion in United States v. Dunson<\/em>\u00a0(No. 08-1691), which I blogged about last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In United States v. Brazelton <\/a><\/em>(No. 07-2488), the defendant was convicted by a jury of various drug and gun offenses.\u00a0 The jury included the second cousin of a man who had\u00a0once been shot by the defendant.\u00a0 Voir dire indicated no actual bias on the part of the juror —\u00a0or even that the juror\u00a0knew of the shooting —\u00a0and no motion was made to strike him for cause.\u00a0 On appeal, however, Brazelton argued that he was entitled to a new trial under the implied bias doctrine, which indicates that close relatives of people with actual bias must be automatically\u00a0excluded.\u00a0 The Seventh Circuit\u00a0(per Judge Coffey) rejected this claim.\u00a0 After noting uncertainty in the law as to whether second cousins are closely\u00a0enough related to fall within the scope of the implied bias rule, the court instead decided the case on the basis of Brazelton’s failure to seek removal of the juror at trial.\u00a0 The court concluded that Brazelton thereby waived any right he had to raise the implied bias claim later.\u00a0 Along the way, the court noted a Sixth Circuit case indicating that defendants may not waive their right to an impartial jury, thus suggesting the existence of a circuit split on the question.<\/p>\n

In United States v. Recendiz <\/a><\/em>(No. 06-1754),\u00a0three defendants\u00a0were convicted of various drug-related crimes.\u00a0 They raised many issues on appeal, but all of their arguments were rejected without much difficulty by the Seventh Circuit (per Judge Kanne).\u00a0 The case provides a notable example of an opening-argument blunder by a defense lawyer, who seemingly assumed the burden of proof in the case (“[W]e don’t want those advantages [of the government bearing\u00a0the\u00a0burden of proof].”).\u00a0 The court nonetheless rejected the defendants’ predictable claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, relying in part on correct statements of the burden on proof in closing arguments and during the jury instructions.<\/p>\n

In United States v. Avila <\/a><\/em>(No. 07-2404), the defendant was also convicted of\u00a0drug-related crimes.\u00a0 Avila raised several issues relating to\u00a0his conviction\u00a0on appeal, all of which were rejected by the Seventh Circuit (per Judge Kanne) without breaking any new legal ground.\u00a0 Avila won a resentencing, however, on the basis of\u00a0an inexplicable error by\u00a0the sentencing judge in determining the applicable guidelines range.\u00a0 One wonders how the lawyers missed what appears to have been an obvious mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Seventh Circuit had three new opinions in criminal cases in the past week.\u00a0 The court also withdrew, without explanation, its opinion in United States v. Dunson\u00a0(No. 08-1691), which I blogged about last week. In United States v. Brazelton (No. 07-2488), the defendant was convicted by a jury of various drug and gun offenses.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}