Fuller v. State (Original)
Annotate this CaseImmediately before the voir dire commenced at his trial, defendant requested that he be permitted to ask the members of the venire panel whether they understood that the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt constituted a level of confidence under the law that was higher than both the preponderance of the evidence and the clear and convincing evidence standards. When the trial court denied his request, defendant objected that he was thereby denied the right to ask a "proper" question during voir dire, depriving him of the ability to intelligently exercise challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. The State contended that error in denying defendant the ability to ask a proper question was harmless on the particular facts of this case. The court held that this type of error was indeed subject to harm analysis, but defendant had not briefed the question, and the State did not convince the court that the error was so plainly harmless that the court should conduct that review for the first time on discretionary review in the interest of judicial economy. Therefore, the court remanded for further proceedings.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.