Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/60

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
36
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

sections of the Code, with others of similar import in the context, which we need not cite, expressly require that all challenges to individual jurors, whether peremptory or for cause, must be taken when the individual juror appears, and before he is sworn as a juror. The language of the statute is identical with the provisions of a statute of the state of Minnesota, under which the supreme court of that state holds that "all challenges by either party to an individual juror, whether for cause or peremptory, should be interposed and determined when he is called, and in the prescribed order, before proceeding further in the call." State v. Armington, 25 Minn. 29; State v. Brown, 12 Minn. 538, (Gil. 448.) [[People v. Scoggins], 37 Cal. 676, is cited as authority for the proposition that twelve men must be called into a jury-box before a defendant in a criminal cause can be called upon to exercise his right of challenge. The case is instructive, and we can and do adopt much of its reasoning as applicable to our own criminal code; but the case is not in point as supporting the construction contended for by defendant’s counsel. In California, there is a section of the statute relating to civil actions which expressly requires the clerk to "draw from the box twelve names," etc. § 159, civil practice act. In deciding the case above cited, the California court attempted to harmonize the civil and criminal statutes of that state relating to the formation of trial juries, and the decision turns upon the construction given by the court to the clause of the statute which expressly requires the clerk to "draw from the box twelve names." The statutes of the territory of Dakota did not contain this special statutory provision. § 243, Code Civil Proc., it must be conceded, is somewhat ambiguous in this: that it apparently recognizes two modes of impaneling a jury for the trial of civil actions. It seems to contemplate that in some cases the right of peremptory challenge will not be exercised until the trial panel is full; and, by clear inference from the language, there are other cases contemplated when that right may be exercised before the panel is completed. We are not called upon in this case to harmonize these ambiguous provisions of the Civil Code with the statute regulating the formation of trial juries in criminal actions, nor shall we attempt todo so. The provisions of