The Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the murder conviction of a gay man who says the jury selection was not handled properly.
Stephen Jonas was found guilty of second-degree murder in the August 2014 stabbing death of Zachery Paulson in Clive. Jonas, who is gay, appealed the conviction, saying a juror who expressed bias against gay people should have been disqualified by the court.
Jonas instead used one of his 10 preemptory strikes to remove the juror and says that kept him from using the strike against another juror later in the selection process. The Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals ruling that said Jonas could not show he was prejudiced by the district court’s refusal to remove the potential juror because that juror didn’t end up on the jury. And it said Jonas did not allege the remaining jury was biased because of his lack of remaining challenges to remove one of them from the trial.
Here’s the ruling: Juror-selection-PDF