Kamari Lowery v. State of Florida

Summary

The Third District Court of Appeal of Florida affirmed Kamari Lowery’s convictions and sentences for manslaughter, robbery with a weapon, and armed burglary with assault. The court held that Lowery failed to preserve his challenge to the trial court’s randomized jury-selection procedure because he did not exhaust his peremptory challenges, identify an objectionable seated juror, request an additional peremptory challenge, and object to the final jury composition before it was sworn. Judge Gordo concurred in the result and separately discussed the permissibility of the randomized jury-box method.

Holdings

1. A party challenging a jury-selection method as impairing the exercise of peremptory challenges must exhaust the allotted peremptory challenges, identify an objectionable juror who remains on the panel, request and be denied an additional peremptory challenge as to that juror, and object to the jury's composition before the panel is sworn. Lowery did not satisfy these requirements, so the claim was not preserved.
2. The concurring opinion would hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by using the randomized jury-box method and that the method caused no prejudicial error on this record.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Lowery preserved a challenge that the randomized jury-selection method impaired counsel's ability to exercise peremptory challenges in an informed, effective, and strategic manner.
2. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by using a randomized jury-box method that did not disclose the order in which remaining jurors would be called.

Disposition

affirmed