In the United States v. Abel Martinez-Salazar case of 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that a defendant who uses one of his peremptory challenges to remove a juror he believes should have been removed for cause cannot later claim violation of his rights under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause and Sixth Amendment's Impartial Jury Clause. The court held that if a defendant chooses to use their peremptory challenge in this way, it is considered as an exercise of personal choice and not compulsion by law or trial error. Therefore, they forfeit any right to complain about loss or impairment of those challenges due to such usage. This decision was based on the principle that defendants are not entitled to an error-free trial but rather a fair one within constitutional parameters.

In the dissenting opinion for United States v. Abel Martinez-Salazar, Justice Stevens argued that a defendant should not have to use one of his peremptory challenges to remove a juror who should have been removed for cause. He believed this violated the defendant's rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. According to him, if a trial court erroneously refuses to dismiss an unqualified juror for cause, forcing the defendant to waste their peremptory challenge on such jurors is fundamentally unfair and undermines confidence in our justice system. The majority’s decision would allow courts to force defendants into making difficult choices between preserving their right of appeal or using up their limited number of discretionary strikes against potentially biased jurors – which he viewed as unacceptable.