Free Notice (Other) - District Court of Colorado - Colorado

Case 1:00-cr-00531-WYD

Document 2650

Filed 11/13/2007

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO Criminal Action No. 00-cr-00531-WYD-2 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. 2. RUDY CABRERA SABLAN, Defendant.

GOVERNMENT AND DEFENDANT'S SUGGESTED PROTOCOL FOR JURY SELECTION

The United States of America, by Troy A. Eid, United States Attorney for the District of Colorado, through Brenda Taylor and Philip A. Brimmer, Assistant United States Attorneys, recommends the following protocol and procedures regarding jury selection. The government has conferred with counsel for Rudy Sablan, who agree with these procedures. 1. Summons ­ The summons to prospective jurors should be mailed approximately two months before the date that the jurors are to report to fill out a juror questionnaire. The summons should contain a letter from the court indicating the date on which jurors must report to complete a questionnaire, the trial date of March 17, 2008, the estimated length of the trial and the fact that the government is seeking the death penalty.

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2. Initial Hardship Requests ­ The Court and the parties should address hardship requests made on the basis of the summonses on a periodic basis in open court. Requests for excusal based on a juror's views on the death penalty should be deferred to the voir dire phase of jury selection. 3. Questionnaire ­ The parties should attempt to agree upon the content of the questionnaire in advance. The Court will give final approval to the content of the questionnaire. On the date that the jurors initially report to the courthouse, the Court should direct the prospective jurors to fill out a written questionnaire. The Court should also explain to the jurors that the pool will be randomly divided into panels and that the panels will be given further instructions from the Clerk's Office as to when they should report for voir dire. The attorneys for the parties may observe the session at which the prospective jurors complete the questionnaires. The Court should distribute the completed questionnaires to the parties once the questionnaires have been collected and copied. 4. Review of questionnaires ­ After reviewing the questionnaires, the parties should meet and confer to determine if there are some prospective jurors who, due to their answers on the questionnaire, should be excused without questioning. Those names, if any, should then be provided to the Court. If the Court and both parties agree, those jurors will then be excused.

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Case 1:00-cr-00531-WYD

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5. Panels ­ The Clerk's Office should take the list of jurors who reported and who filled out a questionnaire and divide it, through a randomized system, into panels of 16 persons. Such panels should be assigned letter designations, e.g. Panel A, Panel B. The Clerk's Office will communicate to the panels, in alphabetical order, when they should report to the Court for voir dire, with Panel A being told to report on March 17, 2008. 6. General Voir Dire ­ Once the members of a given panel have assembled, the Court should give each juror a copy of his or her completed questionnaire and tell the juror not to share the contents of it with anyone else. The Court, after input from the parties, will chose whether to have certain members of each panel come into the Court individually to determine whether they should be excused based on their answers to the questionnaire. If they are not disqualified, such jurors will be asked to leave the courtroom and will otherwise be questioned with the rest of the members of that panel. The panel should then be brought into the courtroom for general voir dire not dealing with the death penalty. The seating order in the jury box should be determined in advance by a randomized method. The Court should begin by reading an introduction of the case and the trial process. This introduction may include a description of certain general facts, a description of certain basic legal concepts, and a description of the jury selection process. The parties should submit draft descriptions to the Court in advance. The Court, during general voir dire, should ask each juror if he or she has changed any answers after

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viewing the questionnaire answers that day. After general voir dire by the Court, each side should have the opportunity to question the panel. 8. Death Penalty Voir Dire ­ Once general voir dire is completed, individual voir dire about the death penalty should take place, with jurors being called into the courtroom one by one according to their seating order in the jury box. The Court should begin by reading them a description of the process. The Court should then ask each juror questions about his or her views on the death penalty. After the Court has questioned the jurors, the parties may in turn question the jurors about their views on the death penalty. At the conclusion of death penalty voir dire as to each juror, the parties may move to strike a juror for cause based on the general voir dire or the death penalty voir dire. 8. Alternate Jurors ­ The parties recommend the seating of four alternate jurors. 9. Exercise of Preemptory Strikes ­ At such time that there are 60 jurors remaining after general and death penalty voir dire, the Court should finish voir dire of the panel in progress and then ask the Clerk's Office to telephonically contact the first 60 jurors that were qualified. Upon confirming the availability of 60 qualified jurors, the Court should then set a hearing for the parties to exercise their preemptory strikes. At such hearing, the 60 qualified jurors will be not present. The strikes should be exercised one person at a time, with the government exercising the first strike, followed by the defendant exercising his first strike, alternating, until one or both sides accept the panel as constituted or until both sides have exhausted their preemptory strikes. The parties

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should be allowed to exercise a strike or strikes to the alternate positions at any time during the process. When a party accepts the panel, it may not thereafter exercise a strike against a person who was "in the box" at that time, but may exercise a remaining preemptory strike against a person who subsequently is seated due to a strike exercised by the other side.

Respectfully submitted this 13th day of November, 2007.

TROY A. EID United States Attorney

BY: s/ Brenda K. Taylor BRENDA K. TAYLOR Assistant U.S. Attorney U.S. Attorney's Office 1225 17 th Street, Suite 700 Denver, Colorado 80202 Telephone (303)454-0100 FAX: (303) 454-0406 E-mail address: [email protected] Attorney for Government

BY: s/ Philip A. Brimmer PHILIP A. BRIMMER Assistant U.S. Attorney U.S. Attorney's Office 1225 17 th Street, Suite 700 Denver, Colorado 80202 Telephone (303)454-0100 FAX: (303) 454-0403 E-mail address: [email protected] Attorney for Government

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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that on this 13th day of November, 2007, I electronically filed the foregoing GOVERNMENT AND DEFENDANT'S SUGGESTED PROTOCOL FOR JURY SELECTION with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system which will send notification of such filing to the following e-mail addresses:

Attorneys for Rudy Sablan Donald R. Knight [email protected] Forrest W. Lewis [email protected]

By: s/ Janet D. Zinser JANET D. ZINSER Supervisory Legal Assistant 1225 Seventeenth Street, Suite 700 Denver, Colorado 80202 Telephone: (303) 454-0327 Facsimile: (303) 454-0403 E-mail: [email protected]

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