Opinion ID: 342459
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Volunteer Jurors and the Jury Selection Act

Text: 14 The Act provides for dismissal of an indictment, following proper objection, upon a court's determination that there has been a substantial failure to comply with the statutory procedures in selecting a grand or petit jury. 28 U.S.C. § 1867(a). It is abundantly clear that the practice of filling gaps in the month's jury pool with volunteers from last month's jurors introduces a significant element of nonrandomization into the selection process that not only technically violates, but substantially departs from, the Act's requirements.
15 The practice unquestionably deviated from the Act's provisions governing petit juror selection in the normal course. The statute provides that the jury clerk shall from time to time publicly draw at random from the qualified jury wheel such number of names of persons as may be required for assignment to grand and petit jury panels. 28 U.S.C. § 1866(a). 2 The names are placed in grand and petit jury panel lists. When the court orders a jury to be drawn, the jury clerk issues summonses for the required number from the appropriate list. 28 U.S.C. § 1866(a), (b). 16 The volunteers who sat on appellant's July jury were selected for the prior June term in accordance with the above scheme. When the July term arrived, their names were thus no longer on the lists of those drawn from the qualified jury wheel for assignment to panels. Indeed, it was the very inadequacy of available petit jurors drawn from the qualified jury wheel that prompted resort to the prior month's juror list. 17 The Act does specifically authorize a court to deal with such unanticipated shortages of petit jurors drawn from the qualified jury wheel. It provides that in such a situation, 18 the court may require the marshal to summon a sufficient number of petit jurors selected at random from the voter registration lists, lists of actual voters, or other lists specified in the plan, in a manner ordered by the court consistent with sections 1861 and 1862 of this title. 19 28 U.S.C. § 1866(f) (emphasis added). 3 It is on § 1866(f) that the Government must and does rest its argument that the employment of volunteers to meet a shortage was not a violation of the Act. Even this argument, however, proves inadequate. 20 Even assuming that the list of last month's jurors was an acceptable list from which to select emergency jurors under § 1866(f), 4 we would still confront the telling contradiction between the use of volunteers and the random selection mandated as explicitly by the emergency provision as by the remainder of the Act. Whatever list a court uses as the source of emergency jurors, § 1866(f) requires random selection from that list. It seems self-evident that allowing people to decide whether they wish to perform a particular task is quite the opposite of randomly selecting those who, unless within narrow and objectively determined categories of exemptions and excuses, must perform the task. 5 A volunteer is not a random selectee. 21
22 Moreover, this failure to comply with the Act must be seen as substantial, sufficient ground under § 1867(a) to dismiss the indictment. This court has recently had occasion to elaborate on § 1867's substantial failure to comply test. In United States v. Davis, 546 F.2d 583, 589, 5th Cir., 1977, we said the following:Determining the substantial compliance question requires that the alleged violations of the Act be weighed against the goals of the statute. The major policy of the Act is that juries shall be 'selected at random from a fair cross section of the community.' 28 U.S.C. § 1861. Discrimination is prohibited in the selection process. 23 (emphasis added). Otherwise technical violations of the statute constitute substantial failure to comply when they affect the random nature or objectivity of the selection process. 24 That the introduction of personal predilections of prospective jurors affects the random nature of the selection process cannot be gainsaid. Surely a district would be in substantial violation of the statute if it selected all its jurors by randomly drawing names from the qualified jury wheel and allowing those selected to opt in or out at will. Limiting such a policy to emergency shortages does not mitigate its nonrandom nature. 25 We need not speculate as to what sort of biases will be reflected in a jury chosen on the basis of its members' willingness to depart from their daily business and serve as jurors. It is enough to recognize that a substantial variable, not contemplated by the Act's few, narrow categories of qualifications, exemptions, and excuses, has confounded the selection process. 6 26 The fact that the volunteers on appellant's jury were randomly selected without regard to personal convenience during the prior month is of no moment. Nonrandom selection of a subgroup from a randomly selected group does not make for a randomly selected subgroup. Former purity cannot randomize what has become unrandom. Section 1866(f) requires that emergency jurors be randomly selected. There is no suggestion in that subsection that Congress intended to allow greater play for the prospects' personal preferences in this aspect of jury selection than in any other. 27 A litigant need not show prejudice to establish a substantial failure to comply with the Act. Congress deleted just such a requirement from the bill presented to the conference committee. See H.R.Rep. No. 1076, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968), reprinted in 1968 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 1792, 1806. Moreover, when a statutory violation directly affects the random nature of the selection process, there is no need to show that the violation tended to exclude some cognizable group from that process. 7 Congress did not simply outlaw certain disparities in representation of certain groups on juries; it designed a procedure of random selection to ensure that no such disparities would arise. A departure from the statutory scheme that directly affects the random nature of selection establishes a substantial violation independently of the departure's consequences in a particular case. 28 Providing prospective jurors with complete discretion whether or not to serve negates the statutory mandate of random selection. The practice of the district court amounted to a substantial failure to comply with the Act. Accordingly, had appellant properly preserved his objection to the practice, he would clearly have been entitled to relief.