Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/856-f-2d-1189-596548230
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 22:49:21+00:00

Document:
Docket Nº: 86-1045, 86-1075 and 86-1188.
Party Name: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Sandy TOWNSLEY, Appellant. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Ernest (Pat) GANDY, Appellant. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Sorkis WEBBE, Jr., Appellant.
Nos. 86-1045, 86-1075 and 86-1188.
Burton H. Shostak, Clayton, Mo., and Irl B. Baris, St. Louis, Mo., for appellant.
James E. Crowe, Jr., Asst. U.S. Atty., for appellee.
Before LAY, Chief Judge, HEANEY, Circuit Judge, HENLEY, Senior Circuit Judge, McMILLIAN, ARNOLD, JOHN R. GIBSON, FAGG, BOWMAN, WOLLMAN, MAGILL, and BEAM, Circuit Judges, En Banc.
The panel opinion in this case is reported at 843 F.2d 1070 (8th Cir.1988). In Part V of that opinion, 843 F.2d at 1082-84, a majority of the panel held that Webbe and Townsley, who are white, have standing to join Gandy, their black co-defendant, in attacking the government's use of ten of its twelve peremptory challenges to remove black veniremen. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). The dissent argued that only Gandy is entitled to raise this issue, and that Townsley and Webbe have no standing to complain about the exclusion of black jurors.
This Court granted rehearing en banc on the narrow question whether in the circumstances of this case Townsley and Webbe have standing to challenge the alleged improper use of peremptory challenges by the prosecution to strike black persons from the petit jury. For the reasons set forth in the dissent from the panel opinion on this issue, see 843 F.2d at 1088-89, we hold that Townsley and Webbe do not have such standing and are not entitled to join in Gandy's Batson challenge. We add only that the present dissenting opinion's grandiloquent attempt to liken Townsley and Webbe to white civil rights workers and other whites who have faced racial animus because of either their efforts to help blacks or their lawful association with blacks, see post at 1193-1194, appears to us to be strangely divorced from the facts of this case. Townsley and Webbe are hardly civil rights workers. They have been convicted of vote fraud, a crime that strikes at the heart of the democratic process. The evidence of their guilt is overwhelming. Their association with blacks, insofar as revealed by the record in this case, has consisted of enlisting them in criminal pursuits. There is simply no factual basis for the argument that the prosecution's use of its peremptory strikes to eliminate black jurors may have violated the rights of these white defendants under the Equal Protection Clause.
In any event, the Batson rule is clear and straightforward: "To establish [a prima facie] case, the defendant first must show that he is a member of a cognizable racial group, ... and that the prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove from the venire members of the defendant's race." Batson, 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723. Other courts have had no difficulty in following this rule, see United States v. Angiulo, 847 F.2d 956, 984 (1st Cir.1988) (nonblack defendants could not complain about the government's use of peremptory challenges to exclude black members from the jury), and neither do we.
must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population. Defendants are not entitled to a jury of any particular composition, Fay v. New York, 332 U.S. 261, 284 [67 S.Ct. 1613, 1625-26, 91 L.Ed. 2043] (1947); Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S., at 413 [92 S.Ct., 1628 at 1634, 32 L.Ed.2d 184 (1972) ] (plurality opinion); but the jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community and thereby fail to be reasonably representative thereof.
419 U.S. at 538, 95 S.Ct. at 701-02.
Similarly, the opinion of the Court in Batson, while basing relief on the Equal Protection Clause and expressing no view on the merits of the petitioner's Sixth Amendment arguments, observed that the Court never has held the fair-cross-section principle applicable to petit juries.
Indeed, it would be impossible to apply a concept of proportional representation to the petit jury in view of the heterogeneous nature of our society. Such impossibility is illustrated by the Court's holding that a jury of six persons is not unconstitutional. Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 102-103, [90 S.Ct. 1893, 1907, 26 L.Ed.2d 446] (1970).
476 U.S. at 85-86 n. 6, 106 S.Ct. at 1716-17 n. 6.

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