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Ham v. State10/5/1999
o would be affected by that evidence. Ms. Huffman was one of many jurors who, again, initially said this evidence "could" affect her. And, finally, along with many other venire members, she answered that the fact that the crime involved a stabbing might make it difficult for her to be fair and impartial.
In undertaking our review of whether these answers required Ms. Huffman to be stricken, we first note that we share the concern of the trial court that, by the manner in which he asked questions about these areas, defense counsel almost seemed to be intentionally "poisoning the well" by asking questions which any honest juror would almost have to answer in the affirmative. Thus, the jury learned that this would be a gruesome case with evidence of excessive drinking, an intent to beat the victim, and use of a knife to repeatedly stab him, and was then asked if they would be affected by this evidence. The common sense answer is that of course they would be affected by it, and indeed it is entirely proper for them to be affected by the fact that the defendant admitted he intended to beat the victim and admitted he had stabbed him multiple times. That is part of the circumstances of the crime and is very relevant to the degree of murder of which he should be convicted. Indeed, the trial Judge indicated that he would have sustained an objection to most of this line of questioning if one had been made, stating:
Court: I don't have an objection here, but I want to ask a question. Is it your desire to have a fair and impartial jury picked or not to have any jury pool left? You're inflaming the jury. You injected your own client's record in to them and then asked them if they're going to be able to consider that or hold it against him. You're asking the jury to speculate as to what findings they might make in the event certain evidence is adduced. There isn't any question that if the people are going to answer you honestly they're going to say, Yeah, some of these things might affect me.
. . . And I'm afraid what we're doing here is you are excluding from the pool a number of potential jurors, . . . And I'm wondering what is the legitimate end of the inquiry here by asking them whether they are going to believe certain evidence, whether if they do hear certain evidence it's going to affect their ability to be fair and impartial. And you know the answer to that question.
When defense counsel said he thought he had a right to find out if the facts about the stabbing were too gruesome for a juror to hear objectively, since the charge was death by stabbing, the Judge stated:
Court: I agree, as it relates to that question, perhaps not earlier, but there was no objection. I'm going to overrule the objection because there isn't any question that even if there's a lesser included submitted it's going to use that language. So the area is legitimate for inquiry. . . But I would suggest it would be in the best interests of both sides that we kind of move this case along. . . .
After specific questioning of certain jurors about the affect of certain publicity, the prosecutor was then given the opportunity to rehabilitate the jurors. In addressing Ms. Huffman, he said his notes reflected that drinking troubled her, and asked:
Q: If you were selected as a juror on this case, would the fact that the drinking was mentioned cause you to be impartial or lose your impartiality?
A: No, but I feel that if the drinking was to the point where there was no control of the individual, that could reflect.
Q: But you haven't heard the evidence yet, have you?
A: Right. No.
Q: And all I'm asking you, ma'am,
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