Opinion ID: 597855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Exclusion of Young Adults From the Jury

Text: 13 Beckum contests the government's failure to exercise preemptory challenges of potential jurors in an age-neutral fashion. We note that no court has found a Fourteenth Amendment equal protection violation based upon the exclusion of a certain age group from the jury. Cf. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 89, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 1719, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) (the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor's purposeful exclusion of black jurors violated a black defendant's equal protection rights). Similarly, this Circuit has specifically rejected the claim that the exclusion of a certain age group from a jury pool amounts to a Sixth Amendment violation of the right to a jury drawn from a cross-section of the community. Silagy v. Peters, 905 F.2d 986, 1010 (7th Cir.1990), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1024, 112 L.Ed.2d 1106 (1991). Accordingly, we do not find an equal protection or Sixth Amendment violation in the process of jury selection.