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North Carolina v. Robinson10/3/1991
o whether racial prejudice would affect their ability to fairly and impartially determine defendant's guilt. The trial court also allowed defendant to ask certain questions of prospective white jurors concerning their associations with blacks in general, such as whether blacks had visited their homes, whether black people worked where they were employed, and whether blacks had attended school with them. However, the trial court sustained prosecution objections to such questions as:
Do you feel like the presence of blacks in your neighborhood has lowered the value of your property or had any effect on it adversely at all?
Have you ever seen any examples of discrimination in your place of work?
Do you have any particular feeling about black people [from] your association [with] them?
Do you think that racial discrimination exists in Guilford County?
Do you belong to any social club or political organization or church in which there are no black members?
Defendant contends that the questions permitted by the trial court would not have materially assisted defense counsel in exercising peremptory challenges because only an openly biased person would have answered the questions permitted by the trial court in the affirmative. Defendant argues that the questions permitted by the trial court would not elicit responses indicative of the more subtle forms of racial bias still present in our society. Therefore, defendant argues, the trial court's restriction upon defense counsel's ability to make inquiry into racial bias violated his rights under the sixth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution and Article 1, sections 19, 24, 26, and 27 of the North Carolina Constitution.
The State contends that the trial court properly limited defendant to relevant questions of potential jurors, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in its control of voir dire. We agree.
In Turner v. Murray, 476 U.S. 28, 90 L. Ed. 2d 27 (1986), the United States Supreme Court held that a capital defendant accused of an interracial crime is entitled to have prospective jurors informed of the race of the victim and questioned on the issue of racial bias. This rule, the Court announced, is "minimally intrusive," and the "trial judge retains discretion as to the form and number of questions on the subject, including the decision whether to question the venire individually or collectively." Id. at 37, 90 L. Ed. 2d at 37 (emphasis added).
In this case, the trial court allowed defendant to question each juror as to whether racial prejudice would interfere with his or her ability to render a fair and impartial verdict, as well as other general questions such as those mentioned above. It is worth noting that, in Turner, the question which the trial court had initially disallowed, and which the United States Supreme Court held proper, was: "Will these facts (that defendant is black and the victim is white) prejudice you against (the defendant) or affect your ability to render a fair and impartial verdict based solely on the evidence?" Id.
In North Carolina, it is well settled that the trial court has broad discretion in controlling the questioning of prospective jurors, and its decisions will be upheld absent a showing of abuse of discretion.
State v. Laws, 325 N.C. 81, 109, 381 S.E.2d 609, 625 (1989), death sentence vacated, U.S. , 108 L. Ed. 2d 603 (1990). "Regulation of the manner and the extent of inquiries on voir dire rests largely in the trial judge's discretion." State v. Allen, 322 N.C. 176,
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