State v. Perry
| Decision Date | 14 October 1970 |
| Docket Number | No. 7,7 |
| Parties | STATE of North Carolina v. Milford PERRY. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Robert Morgan, Atty. Gen., Millard R. Rich, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Frank B. Aycock, Jr., Elizabeth City, for defendant.
The defendant's able trial counsel requests this Court to review the record of the trial and to give the defendant the benefit of any error disclosed in the record. However, by brief and by oral argument, the defendant relies for a new trial on his Assignment of Error No. 3, which presents this question: 'Did the trial judge commit prejudicial error in denying the defendant the right to the selection of the trial jury according to North Carolina custom and practice?'
Counsel for the defendant argued here the defendant was prejudiced in the jury selection by the failure of the court to require that each prospective juror be separately sworn and separately examined, touching his fitness to serve on the trial panel. He cites as authority this Court's opinion in State v. Roseboro, 276 N.C. 185, 171 S.E.2d 886. Admittedly the practice usually, but not always, followed in selecting the trial jury in a capital case is correctly stated in Roseboro. The practice was alluded to in that case for the purpose of disclosing the wide range of inquiry allowed the parties before requiring them to pass on the acceptability of each juror. In Roseboro the jury selection covered 416 pages of the trial record. This Court's discussion was not intended as fixing any rule for jury selection and it must be noted that in general practice the method followed in Roseboro is frequently criticized as being unduly wasteful of the court's time and fails to accomplish any useful purpose. Each defendant is entitled to full opportunity to face the prospective jurors, make diligent inquiry into their fitness to serve, and to exercise his right to challenge those who are objectionable to him. The actual conduct of the trial must be left largely to the sound discretion of the trial judge so long as the defendant's rights are scrupulously afforded him.
Under the trial court order, the method of selection offered the defendant full opportunity to exercise all his constitutional rights. The panel selected did not contain any juror to which he had objection. He fails to allege that he had exhausted his peremptory challenges.
We do not know of any rule or authority which requires the North Carolina trial court in any criminal case, capital or otherwise, to follow the voir dire procedure in jury selection which the Court has described in Roseboro. The federal rule with respect to jury selection in criminal cases provides:
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State v. Jarrette
...This motion also was directed to the sound discretion of the trial judge. State v. Bryant, 282 N.C. 92, 191 S.E.2d 745; State v. Perry, 277 N.C. 174, 176 S.E.2d 729. There was no abuse of discretion in its Forty-four assignments of error relate to questions propounded by the Solicitor to th......
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State v. Young
...largely to the sound discretion of the trial judge so long as the defendant's rights are scrupulously afforded him. State v. Perry, 277 N.C. 174, 176 S.E.2d 729 (1970). Therefore, a motion to examine jurors individually, rather than collectively, is directed to the sound discretion which th......
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State v. Atkinson, No. 2
...before any jurors were tendered to the defense. Such procedure was recently considered and approved by this Court in State v. Perry, 277 N.C. 174, 176 S.E.2d 729 (1970). There, Justice Higgins, for the Court, wrote: 'Each defendant is entitled to full opportunity to face the prospective jur......
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State v. Madden
...does not indicate that either defendant exhausted the peremptory challenges allowed him by the law of this State. See: State v. Perry, 277 N.C. 174, 176 S.E.2d 729 (1970); State v. Bock, As this Court, speaking through Justice Higgins, said in State v. Peele, 274 N.C. 106, 113, 161 S.E.2d 5......