Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/400/505/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 10:35:47+00:00

Document:
State law that categorically prevents a change of venue for a jury trial in a criminal case, regardless of the extent of local prejudice against the defendant, solely on the ground that the crime with which he is charged is a misdemeanor held violative of the right to trial by an impartial jury guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 507512.
Elizabeth B. DuBois, New York City, for appellant.
Sverre O. Tinglum, Madison, Wis., for appellee.
On August 31, 1967, during a period of civil disturbances in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the appellant, a Romain Catholic priest, was arrested in that city on a charge of resisting arrest. Under Wisconsin law that offense is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $500 or imprisonment in the county jail for not more than one year, or both. 1 After a series of continuances, the appellant was brought to trial before a jury in a Milwaukee County court on February 8, 1968. The first morning of the trial was occupied with qualifying the jurors, during the course of which t he appellant exhausted all of his peremptory challenges. 2 The trial then proceeded, and at its conclusion the jury convicted the appellant as charged.
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin affirmed the conviction. 41 Wis.2d 312, 164 N.W.2d 266. It held that the trial judge had been correct in his understanding that a Wisconsin statute foreclosed the possibility of a change of venue in a misdemeanor prosecution. 4 It further held that this state law was constitutionally valid, pointing out that 'it would be extremely unusual for a community as a whole to prejudge the guilt of any person charged with a misdemeanor.' 41 Wis.2d, at 317, 164 N.W.2d, at 268. The court also noted that a defendant in a Wisconsin misdemeanor prosecution has a right to ask for continuances and to challenge prospective jurors on voir dire, and if 'these measures are still not sufficient to provide an impartial jury, the verdict can be set aside after trial based on the denial of a fair and impartial trial.' 41 Wis.2d, at 321, 164 N.W.2d, at 270. Two members of the court dissented, believing that the state statute did not absolutely forbid a change of venue in a misdemeanor prosecution, and that if the statute did contain such a prohibition it was constitutionally invalid. 41 Wis.2d, at 325, 164 N.W.2d, at 272.
'In essence, the right to jury trial guarantees to the criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial, 'indifferent' jurors. The failure to accord an accused a fair hearing violates even the minimal standards of due process. In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 68 S.Ct. 499, 92 L.Ed. 682; Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749. 'A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process.' In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136, 75 S.Ct. 623, 625, 99 L.Ed. 942. In the ultimate analysis, only the jury can strip a man of his liberty or his life. In the language of Lord Coke, a juror must be as 'indifferent as he stands unsworne.' Co.Litt. 155b. His verdict must be based upon the evidence developed at the trial. Cf. Thompson v. City of Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 80 S.Ct. 624, 4 L.Ed.2d 654. This is true, regardless of the heinousness of the crime charged, the apparent guilt of the offender or the station in life which he occupies. It was so written into our law as early as 1807 by Chief Justice Marshall in 1 Burr's Trial 416 * * *.' 366 U.S., at 722, 81 S.Ct., at 1642.
There are many ways to try to assure the kind of impartial jury that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. 9 In Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600, the Court enumerated many of the procedures available, particularly in the context of a jury threatened by the poisonous influence of prejudicial publicity during the course of the trial itself. 384 U.S., at 357363, 86 S.Ct., at 15191522. Here we are concerned with the methods available to assure an impartial jury in a situation where, because of prejudicial publicity or for some other reason, the community from which the jury is to be drawn may already by permeated with hostility toward the defendant. The problem is an ancient one. Mr. Justice Holmes stated no more than a commonplace when, two generations ago, he noted that '(a)ny judge who has sat with juries knows that, in spite of forms, they are extremely likely to be impregnated by the environing atmosphere.' Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 349, 35 S.Ct. 582, 595, 59 L.Ed. 969 (dissenting opinion).
It is doubtless true, as the Supreme Court of Wisconsin said, that community prejudice is not often aroused against a man accused only of a misdemeanor. But under the Constitution a defendant must be given an opportunity to show that a change of venue is required in his case. The Wisconsin statute wholly denied that opportunity to the appellant.
2. A fair trial, of course, in fundamental. No one disputes that. As the Court points out in footnote 12 of its opinion, this principle of English-American jurisprudence was evolved prior to the embodiment of the treasured concepts of an impartial jury in the Sixth Amendment and of due process in the Fifth and Fourteenth.
4. Thus, I find myself in agreement with the two dissenting Justices of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin and with that court's Chief Justice, in concurring in the result of the majority opinion, when the three conclude, 41 Wis.2d 312, 324, 325, 164 N.W.2d 266, 272, that a change of venue in a misdemeanor case is constitutionally required upon a proper showing.
5. I am not a loss to understand how a change of venue statute expressed in positive but permissive terms and specifically applicable to felony cases can be construed to embody a negative prohibition for misdemeanor cases, particularly with regard to so fundamental a right as the right to have a trial untainted by community prejudice. The statutory interpretation so made is all the more unexpected because it raises an otherwise quite avoidable constitutional issue.
7. The record before us leaves much to be desired. It discloses no formal offer of proof of the kind customarily made. It contains no transcript of the voir dire, and thus there is no way in which we or anyone else can evaluate from the voir dire the presence, or the possibility of the presence, of actual prejudice in any member of the jury panel. Although a 'motion after verdict' was made and although it referred to 'the ground of community prejudice,' the motion does not in so many words assert that this defendant actually was denied a fair and impartial trial. Neither is the motion supported by affidavits incorporating the claimed prejudicial media reports.
8. The jury appears to have been selected expeditiously and without difficulty during a single morning. And we note what appears to be conflicting evidence in the record as to Father Groppi's behavior at the point of his arrest, evidence which would support a fair jury's conclusion either way, that is, that he did resist arrest or that he did not resist arrest, within the meaning and application of the Wisconsin statute. On balance, in the face of what may be regarded as a ruling by the trial court that no showing, however persuasive, of community prejudice and its effect upon the jury actually selected could command a change of venue in this misdemeanor case, I am content to join in the vacation of the judgment of conviction and in the remand in order to allow the defendant to attempt to make his proof.
9. I would stress, however, more than by the three-line final footnote which may be lost to the reader who is more interested in the notoriety of the case than in what we are doing today by way of specific ruling, that this remand does not necessarily mean a new trial for Father Groppi, and freedom from his conviction on the charge of resisting arrest. The defendant is to have his opportunity to demonstrate prejudice and the likelihood of an unfair trial. If he fails in that quest, or if he now refuses to undertake it, the judgment of conviction may be reinstated. If he does not fail, then of course the conviction falls and the State is remitted to its choice between a new trial or a dismissal of the charge.
10. Finally, I doubt very much whether this rather unimportant case, but an admittedly sensitive one because of the identity of the defendant and the means he has selected to make his protests known, at all approaches the circumstances and the offensive character of what this Court condemned in Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966), in Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963), and in Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961), cited in the Court's opinion. Nevertheless, unfairness anywhere, in shall cases as well as in large, is abhorred, is to be ferreted out, and is to be eliminated. Despite the unsatisfactory record, this defendant must have his opportunity to demonstrate what he alleges.
I dissent from the Court's vacation of the judgment of conviction. I agree, of course, that this appellant is entitled to trial before an impartial jury. This right is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and made binding on the States by the Fourteenth. Ante, at 509. Cf. Parker v. Gladden, 385 U.S. 363, 87 S.Ct. 468, 17 L.Ed.2d 420 (1966); see also Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 68, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 1683, 91 L.Ed. 1903 (1947) (Black, J., dissenting).
As the Wisconsin Supreme Court suggested, the right to trial before an impartial jury can be protected in many ways: by granting a continuance until community passions subside; by challenging jurors for cause and by peremptory challenges during voir dire proceedings. But it simply cannot be said that the right to trial by an impartial jury must necessarily include a right to change of venue. It may or may not be wiser to implement the Sixth Amendment by a change of venue provision, but in my view, the Constitution does not require it. If the usual devices for protection of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by an impartial jury are insufficient, the defendant can always be given a new trial on the ground of jury prejudice.
The Court suggests that Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963), controls the disposition of this case. But there we held that prejudicial publicity was so extensive that it was a denial of due process to refuse a motion for change of venue where the State had provided for venue changes as a method of ensuring an impartial jury. See La.Rev.Stat. § 15:293 (1950). Here Wisconsin has not chosen to provide that means of implementing the Sixth Amendment right in misdemeanor cases. So long as a defendant can protect his Sixth Amendment right by a motion for a new trial, I see no constitutional infirmity in the Wisconsin statute. Nor does Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961), compel the majority's result. There we held that a motion for a second change of venue should have been granted despite a state statute which seemingly permitted only one change. However, we carefully pointed out that the Indiana Supreme Court had previously held as a matter of state law that the statute's literal wording did not foreclose a second change of venue. 366 U.S., at 721, 81 S.Ct., at 1641, citing State ex rel. Gannon v. Porter Circuit Court, 239 Ind. 637, 159 N.E.2d 713 (1959).
'Whoever knowingly resists or obstructs an officer while such officer is doing any act in his official capacity and with lawful authority, may be fined not more than $500 or imprisoned not more than one year in county jail or both.' Wis.Stat. § 946.41(1) (1967).
We reject the suggestion that the appellant is not in a position to attack the statute because he made an insufficient showing of community prejudice. His motion for a change of venue explicitly asked in the alternative that he be permitted to 'offer proof' of the nature and extent of the local prejudice against him. His motion was denied in its entirety, thus foreclosing any opportunity to produce evidence of a prejudiced community. The trial court's ruling was, of course, wholly consistent with its view that it was powerless to grant a change of venue under Wisconsin law, regardless of what showing of local prejudice might have been made.
Accord, Pamplin v. Mason, 364 F.2d 1 (CA5); State ex rel. Ricco v. Biggs, 198 Or. 413, 255 P.2d 1055.
That question was answered affirmatively in Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66, 90 S.Ct. 1886, 26 L.Ed.2d 437.
See Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U.S. 213, 87 S.Ct. 988, 18 L.Ed.2d 1; Smith v. Hooey, 393 U.S. 374, 89 S.Ct. 575, 21 L.Ed.2d 607; Dickey v. Florida, 398 U.S. 30, 90 S.Ct. 1564, 26 L.Ed.2d 26, id., at 39, 90 S.Ct., at 1569, Brennan, J., concurring.
'This review demonstrates that the great weight of authority supports the view that courts, which by statute or custom possess a jurisdiction like that of the King's Bench before our Revolution, have the right to change the place of trial, when justice requires it, to a county where an impartial trial may be had.
Whether corrective relief can be afforded the appellant short of a new trial will be for the Wisconsin courts to determine in the first instance. Cf. Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1, 1011, 90 S.Ct. 1999, 20032004, 26 L.Ed.2d 387.

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