LESTENKOF v. State

OPINION

BOLGER, Judge.

This case involves the competing values protected by the constitutional guarantee that a criminal defendant must have an "impartial jury." 1 The jury venire must include a "fair cross section" of the community in which the alleged offense occurred.2 In addition, the individual jurors may not be biased by their relationships to the parties or their knowledge of the dispute.3 These values sometimes become difficult to balance when a jury trial is scheduled in a small town or village. In the current case, we conclude that the superior court properly balanced these competing…