The Utah Court of Appeals has reversed the negligent homicide conviction of Carl John Holm, who caused a fatal crash in 2012 when he ran a red light.
The court said in a 3-0 decision that 3rd District Judge Katie Bernards-Goodman should have allowed follow-up questioning of potential jurors who indicated they or someone close to them had been in a serious car accident.
Without further questioning, there was a dearth of information needed to ferret out a potential juror’s bias, and the right to the informed exercise of peremptory challenges — which are made to exclude someone from a jury without giving a specific reason — was “significantly impaired,” the court said.