Definition
1. (Pleading — historical) In common law indictment practice, a term of art formerly required in a murder indictment when death resulted from a physical act of wounding, beating, or bruising. At common law, the precise language of a murder indictment was rigorously controlled; "struck" was among the words courts treated as essential to describe the manner of killing in cases involving manual or instrument-based violence. Omission of the word could be fatal to the indictment.
2. (Jury selection) Past tense and past participle of "strike" in the jury-selection context. A juror who has been removed from the venire through a peremptory challenge or a challenge for cause is said to have been struck. See also STRUCK JURY (below).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Primarily listed as a surname; as a verb form, simply the past tense of "strike" in general use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Past tense and past participle of "strike." Webster's also records the compound "struck jury" — a special jury composed of persons with particular knowledge or qualifications, formed by having each party strike a set number from the panel until the required trial number remains.
The gap between ordinary and legal meaning is narrow for the verb form but significant in context. In everyday speech, "struck" conveys nothing about pleading requirements or jury procedure. In legal usage, the word carries historical weight as a term of art in indictments and a standard procedural descriptor in voir dire — meanings entirely invisible to the lay reader.
Common Confusion
STRUCK vs. STRICKEN: Modern courts and practitioners vary in their use of "struck" and "stricken" as the past participle of "strike" in procedural contexts (a juror was struck / a juror was stricken; testimony was struck / stricken from the record). Both forms appear in case law and court rules without consistent preference. Researchers should search both forms when canvassing historical records and modern opinions.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
STRUCK JURY: A special jury constituted by a striking process in which each party eliminates a defined number of candidates from a larger panel, leaving the required number to serve. Distinguished from an ordinary jury by the active bilateral reduction process and, historically, by the special qualifications of the venire from which it was drawn. The struck jury was used in cases demanding particular expertise or in high-stakes civil matters. The procedure has largely disappeared from American practice but persisted longer in English courts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "struck" in two distinct and unconnected legal contexts, and conflating them produces research errors.
In historical indictment materials, the word is a pleading term of art. Pre-19th-century murder indictments were highly formulaic, and courts strictly enforced verbal requirements. Finding — or failing to find — "struck" in an early indictment may signal something about the sufficiency challenge being litigated, not merely describe a physical act. Researchers working in colonial American, early federal, or English common law records should treat the word's presence or absence as potentially significant rather than purely descriptive.
In jury selection materials, "struck" is the standard past-tense form describing peremptory and for-cause challenges. This usage is pervasive in trial transcripts, voir dire records, and appellate opinions dealing with Batson challenges and related equal protection doctrine. When researching struck juror records, be alert to the variant "stricken" in older materials and in jurisdictions with different stylistic conventions. Quantitative analysis of which jurors were struck — and on what apparent basis — is central to Batson litigation, making precise identification of the term in the record essential.
The Webster's 1913 entry for "struck jury" is a useful pointer to a historical procedure that generated its own body of practice and case law in 18th and 19th century English and American courts. Researchers tracing the history of special juries will find the compound term more productive than "struck" alone.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four historical dictionaries converge on the pleading sense: Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's give virtually identical definitions, each identifying "struck" as a term essential to a murder indictment where death arises from wounding, beating, or bruising. The citations across these dictionaries overlap substantially — Bulstrode, Coke, and Crooke Jacobus appear in multiple entries — confirming a shared common law source base rather than independent derivation. Bouvier adds a citation to 6 Binney 179, a Pennsylvania reporters volume, suggesting the requirement carried into early American practice.
Anderson's simply cross-references STRIKE, declining to develop the pleading sense independently — a notable omission, since the verb form "strike" in Anderson's context likely addresses labor and commercial meanings, not indictment pleading. This cross-reference should be treated cautiously; a researcher following it may be redirected away from the historically significant pleading usage.
None of the historical dictionaries address the jury-selection sense of "struck," which is instead captured in Webster's 1913 under the compound "struck jury." This gap reflects the encyclopedic tendency of legal dictionaries of that era to organize jury-related content under procedural headings (JURY, CHALLENGE, VENIRE) rather than under verb forms.
Jurisdictional Note
The pleading requirement for the word "struck" was an English common law formality that was received into early American practice but progressively abandoned as states adopted reformed criminal procedure codes through the 19th and 20th centuries. Modern indictment pleading in all U.S. jurisdictions is governed by statute or rule, and no current jurisdiction requires this precise word. The struck jury procedure survives in limited form in some jurisdictions for particular civil actions; researchers should consult the procedural rules of the specific jurisdiction and era under study.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Jury Selection and Challenge Procedure; Common Law Pleading and Indictment Forms.