Does a post-conviction finding that a juror was not impartial under constitutional standards based on their relationship with a witness?

However, the court notes that in both cited cases, the post-conviction conclusion that a juror was not impartial under constitutional standards was based on a post-trial finding that the juror had concealed, on voir dire, the fact that he had prior to trial been involved as victim or innocent participant in a situation not unlike the crime for which the defendant had been tried--experiential facts held to raise a manifest presumption, in logic and in common sense, that the juror could not be intellectually or emotionally impartial in considering the evidence against any alleged malefactor in a similar situation, particularly, as in De Vita, where the issue facing the jury was the imposition of the death penalty. The court cannot conclude that any such logical and common sense presumption in fact arises when the alleged partiality involves, not a juror's concealment of his personal identification with the crime or its victim, but his belated discovery of a purely coincidental relationship with a witness whose testimony may have more or less materiality to the issues at trial--here, involving aspects of the defendant's behavior which relate to the crime or the surrounding situation only as they involve defendant's prior and subsequent states of mind. In such a case, where there is no evidence of actual prejudice or overt psychological pressure on the juror, compare Remmer v. United States, 350 U.S. 377, 76 S.Ct. 425, 100 L.Ed. 435 (1956), and where there is no presumption of patent partiality, neither federal nor state law appears to require disqualification of a juror on constitutional grounds merely because of his marginal relationship with a witness. Indeed, the existence of any bias at all in such a juror arises, not as a matter of inarguable logic and commonsense experience but as a creature of state statutory law, which in New York, as defendant points out, has only recently expanded to incorporate into its provisions on jury qualifications, in derogation of common law, the concept of "implied bias" arising from a relationship based on factors other than consanguinity or prior litigation, and specifically leaves the question of which, if any, relationships are likely to signify partiality for case-by-case determination on the part of the trial judge.

The court having determined that the trial judge in the instant case followed the statutory procedures in deciding mid-trial that a statutorily-defined bias requiring disqualification of a juror did not exist, compare Ham v. South Carolina, supra, 409 U.S. at 527, 93 S.Ct. at 850, the court concludes that defendant's right to an impartial trial, governed by due process of law, has not been violated.