People v. Wong Bin

ANGELLOTTI, J.

The defendant, having been convicted in the superior court of Los Angeles County of the crime of murder in the first degree, and adjudged to suffer death, appeals from the judgment and order denying his motion for a new trial. The principal question presented by this appeal is as to the impanelment of the trial jury.

When the case came on for trial, on April 21, 1902, in department one of the superior court of said county, in which department the information against him had been filed and was regularly pending, there was a regular panel of jurors present, which had been, on January 23, 1902, drawn from the trial jury-box of the county, by order of the presiding judge of said department, to serve as term trial jurors in said department one, for the period of three months from February 1, 1902, and until legally discharged.

There was also present the regular panel of department three of said court, consisting of twenty-three jurors, brought into department one on this day for the trial of this case, in the manner and for the reasons indicated by the statement of the presiding judge of department one, which is contained in the record, and is as follows, viz.:—

“Thinking that we had not enough regular jurors here in our regular panel to obtain a jury in this case, knowing that the defendant had twenty peremptory challenges, and the people ten; that the challenges alone would exceed the number of jurors that we had here in this department, I ordered the clerk to obtain the term trial jury from department three, so as to give you plenty of names to draw from, and not to have to issue a special venire.”

[62]

’ These jurors, so procured, had been, on April 7, 1902, regularly drawn from the trial jury-box of the county by order of the presiding judge of department three, for the trial of .cases at issue in said department three. The names of all these jurors in attendance, both those belonging to the panel of department one and those belonging to department three, were placed together in the triál jury-box, and the jury drawn therefrom to try this case, the jury as completed and sworn having upon it jurors from both panels.

Before any juror was sworn,' defendant made his objection to the method adopted, in the form of a challenge to the panel, fully and specifically stating his objections to the placing in the jury-box of the names of twenty-three persons who were not on the regular panel of the department, and who were not present, it was claimed, in pursuance of any law or any. valid direction of the court. The challenge, after the facts above stated had been elicited, was disallowed, and defendant saved- his exception to the ruling of the court. In the impanelment of the jury, he exercised all of the peremptory challenges allowed under the law, and asked to be allowed to exercise further and additional peremptory challenges, which application was denied, and he excepted to such denial.