for-cause challenge in Texas

2017A defendant may raise a for-cause challenge against a veniremember who expresses a bias or prejudice “against the law upon which either the State or the defense is entitled to rely.” Gardner, 306 S.W.3d at 295 .

2014Gardner v. State, 306 S.W.3d 274, 295 (Tex. Crim.

2007Id. at 91 .

2007Id. at 91.

2025But because this question was not properly phrased, it did not lay a proper foundation to establish that a prospective juror was challengeable for cause.5 In Cardenas, the Court of Criminal Appeals clarified that although no magic language is required to support a challenge for cause, a proper foundation question to establish a for-cause challenge based on a prospective juror’s inability to consider the full range of punishment should address whether the prospective juror could consider the minimum punishment “under any facts at all” or “if the facts justify it.” See 325 S.W.3d at 187–88.

2025In that case, the court held that defense counsel had laid the proper foundation by asking prospective jurors whether they “[c]ould . . . honestly ever fairly consider on an aggravated sexual assault of a child as little as five years in prison and give probation as an appropriate punishment[?]” Id. at 181 (emphasis added); see id. at 187–89.

2021See Leach v. State, 770 S.W.2d 903, 907 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi–Edinburg 1989, pet. ref’d) (upholding grant of State’s challenge for cause where the veniremember stated he would be very skeptical of the testimony of any police officer due to son’s experiences with officers).

2014We noted that, “Constitutional provisions bear on the selection of a jury for the trial of a criminal case.”32 However, it was the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury embodied both in the federal and Texas Constitution that this Court identified as the most pertinent to jury selection.33 Although we stated that a trial judge’s error in excluding a potential juror “for impermissible reasons (such as race, sex, or ethnicity) may violate other constitutional provisions,” an error in granting the State’s challenge was not of constitutional dimension.34 Accordingly, such an erro