Opinion ID: 1250937
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: preservation of jury panel

Text: In the third summarized assignment of error, Garza complains that (a) the district court should have quashed the jury panel because its makeup violated his Sixth Amendment right to be tried by a jury fairly representative of the community and violated his equal protection right to have members of his particular discernible minority group represented, and (b) the requirement of Neb.Rev.Stat. § 25-1601 (Reissue 1989), that jurors be citizens of the United States and read, speak, and understand the English language, contributes to discrimination against Hispanics. As a result of the pretrial publicity, Garza and the plaintiff-appellee, State of Nebraska, agreed to have the jury selected in North Platte, Lincoln County, and driven to Omaha for the trial. Before accepting this agreement, the district court reviewed with Garza his right under Neb. Const. art. I, § 11, to a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the county or district in which the offense is alleged to have been committed. Garza expressly waived his right to a Douglas County jury and agreed to a jury selected from Lincoln County, basically from North Platte. Nonetheless, prior to the selection of the jury, Garza moved to quash the jury panel, arguing that the panel contains no blacks or other persons of color or Hispanics, with the exception of the two panel Mexican-Americans.... The motion to strike the jury panel was renewed after the jury had been selected. In support of his motion, Garza offered in evidence a list of the potential jurors and the juror qualification forms. Contrary to Garza's assertion, the juror forms do not reveal the ethnic background of the potential jurors. Moreover, we have not been directed to anything in the record which establishes that Garza is a member of any cognizable group of the population. Nonetheless, his arguments assume that he is Hispanic and that, as such, he is a member of a distinctive and cognizable racial group; we, for the purpose of this analysis, assume the same.