Cite as: 528 U. S. 304 (2000)
Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
ample, a defendant had plenty of peremptories left but chose instead to allow to be placed upon the jury a person to whom he had registered an objection for cause, and whose presence he believed would nullify any conviction.
The resolution of juror-bias questions is never clear cut, and it may well be regarded as one of the very purposes of peremptory challenges to enable the defendant to correct judicial error on the point. Indeed, that must have been one of their purposes in earlier years, when there was no appeal from a criminal conviction, see Bessette v. W. B. Conkey Co., 194 U. S. 324, 335-336 (1904)—so that if the defendant did not correct the error by using one of his peremptories, the error would not be corrected at all. It is certainly not clear to me that the institution of appeals exempted defendants from using peremptories for this original purpose, thereby giving them (in effect) additional challenges.
Because the question is not presented (and hence cannot be authoritatively resolved), I would leave it unaddressed.
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