UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. MARVIN WILBERT POWELL
US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Niemeyer, March 1, 2017,
Ineffective Assistance- A defense attorney was not required to seek to disqualify a juror where she told the defendant’s father that “everything would be alright and that [he] needed to give [his] son a good kick in the butt.”

Facts:
As the defendant and his father were entering the courthouse, a woman spoke to the defendant’s father. She asked if the defendant was his son. According to the father, “[s]he then told me that everything would be alright and that I needed to give my son a good kick in the butt.”

Ineffective Assistance of Counsel- A violation of the Sixth Amendment right to “assistance of counsel for his defense” “requires showing that counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the ‘counsel’ guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment.

Jury Trial
Impartiality- The Sixth Amendment also guarantees to criminal defendants “the right to a . . . trial[] by an impartial jury.

to be impartial, a jury must be “capable and willing to decide the case solely on the evidence before it.”
The inquiry is whether “the juror can lay aside [her] impression or opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court.”

From the case:
The juror told the defendant’s father “that everything would be alright and that [he] needed to give [his] son a good kick in the butt.”
The meaning of this statement is far from clear. Upon hearing of such a statement, a reasonable lawyer in trial counsel’s position might have understood (1) that the juror may have prejudged the case at least to the extent that she thought that Powell needed a “good kick in the butt”; or (2) that the juror, when stating that “everything would be alright,” was reassuring Powell’s father that she was predisposed towards Powell and felt content to leave any punishment that might be needed in the hands of Powell’s father.
Because it was ambiguous, the defense attorney’s action (not challenging the juror) was reasonable.