Opinion ID: 2975131
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Grand Jury Challenge

Text: Henley claims he is entitled to relief under the Due Process Clause based on the systematic exclusion of women from the position of jury foreperson in Jackson County, Tennessee. He presents evidence that from 1974 to 1994, a woman was never selected to serve as a grand jury foreperson; Henley was indicted in 1985. At this time, the foreperson in Tennessee played an unusually important role because he was selected independently by the judge as a thirteenth member of the No. 03-5891 Henley v. Bell Page 4 grand jury. See Campbell v. Louisiana, 523 U.S. 392, 402 (1998). Thus, the selection of the foreperson affected the grand jury’s composition. In Campbell, the Supreme Court held that defendants have standing to challenge racial discrimination in the composition of the grand jury used to indict them. Although Campbell addresses race alone, Henley contends that this rule extends to gender-based claims as well. In order to raise this claim, however, Henley must first show that he may rely on the rule articulated in Campbell under the retroactivity doctrine of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), which limits a petitioner’s ability to obtain relief based on new rules of criminal procedure announced after his conviction became final. Henley raised this claim before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in his state petition for post-conviction relief, and the court denied it, finding that Henley could not rely on a retroactive application of Campbell under Teague. AEDPA directs our inquiry to determine whether the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals’ conclusion was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law; thus, our question is whether the Tennessee court’s application of Teague was unreasonable. We hold that it was not. In making its determination, the state court cited favorably our decision in Coe v. Bell, 161 F.3d 320 (6th Cir. 1998), in which we discussed this issue at some length, concluding that Campbell’s rule cannot be traced for purposes of retroactivity to either Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493 (1972) (plurality opinion), or Hobby v. United States, 468 U.S. 339 (1984). Although Coe cannot control our disposition because of the strictures of AEDPA, we find its reasoning helpful.1 For Henley to succeed, he must show that Hobby or Peters compelled the result in Campbell to such a degree that any conclusion to the contrary would be unreasonable. As Coe suggests, however, Campbell cannot be traced to Hobby or Peters so clearly. First, although the Campbell Court cited Peters approvingly in concluding that a defendant can raise a due process challenge to the exclusion of members of another race from a state grand jury, only three Justices in Peters based their decision on both the Constitution and a criminal statute they read to provide defendants this entitlement. Coe, 161 F.3d at 353 (citing Peters, 407 U.S. at 497–98). The other three Justices in the six-Justice majority concluded that the right stemmed from the statute alone. Id. (citing Peters, 407 U.S. at 505–07, 511, and Campbell, 523 U.S. at 400–01). Thus, because “‘the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds,’ Peters cannot be said to stand for the proposition that the constitution gave Peters . . . the ability to raise a due-process challenge to the exclusion of Blacks (or women) from his grand jury.” Id. (citing Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977)). We find this reasoning sound, and Henley cannot show the Tennessee appellate court’s decision concluding that Peters fails to authorize the instant due process challenge is unreasonable or contrary to clearly established federal law. As for Hobby, the Campbell court cited Hobby approvingly, but Hobby cannot be said to have compelled Campbell’s result for retroactivity purposes. As Coe explained, In Hobby, a white male defendant challenged his indictment because he said that the grand jury excluded Blacks and women. Because Hobby’s claim had been dismissed as a matter of law, the Supreme Court assumed that the violation had occurred and proceeded to consider if Hobby had any remedy. The Court began by noting that purposeful exclusion of women and Blacks from grand jury service was unconstitutional, without distinguishing between gender and race. In proceeding next to the question of remedy, therefore, the Court seemed to be assuming implicitly 1 Henley’s case is distinguishable from Coe in that Coe’s conviction became final before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Hobby; nevertheless, the decision in Coe extensively examined the question whether Hobby compelled the Court’s decision in Campbell. Any argument that Coe is inapposite because of this distinguishing fact is misplaced as we look to Coe only for guidance in determining what law is clearly established. Hofbauer, 337 F.3d at 716. No. 03-5891 Henley v. Bell Page 5 that Hobby had standing to raise his claim, both on gender and racial grounds, though it noted the narrow holding of Peters. In the end, the Court decided (for reasons that do not concern us) that Hobby was not entitled to a remedy. The Campbell Court read Hobby approvingly, as establishing some sort of due-process protection with regard to race (the only issue Campbell pursued), though it left the determination of the bounds of that protection, which it said were “still open,” for the lower court to determine on remand. We do not doubt that Hobby and Campbell can be read as extending due-process protection to men challenging the exclusion of women, though neither case provided detail on the extent of that protection. The casual manner in which these cases suggest such an extension does not mean, however, that the holdings followed necessarily from “existing precedent.” Indeed, the failure of Hobby even to mention the gender/standing question paved the way for conclusions such as the one we reached later in Ford v. Seabold. Id. at 354 (citations omitted). Coe also noted that Justice Marshall issued a dissenting opinion from the denial of certiorari in Ford v. Kentucky, 469 U.S. 984, 985–86 (1984), a case decided after Hobby, in which he commented that the third-party standing issue was not definitively resolved and that the Court had issued conflicting pronouncements on the issue. Id. In sum, Coe’s reasoning convinces us that the Tennessee court’s conclusion was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of Teague. Moreover, as Coe noted, when we examined this issue in Ford v. Seabold we concluded that a defendant did not “have standing to challenge the composition of the grand jury pool under the due process clause.” 841 F.2d 677, 688 (6th Cir. 1988). Seabold bolsters our conclusion in that it provides a perspective on the state of federal law at a time quite relevant to our determination of this issue: after Hobby, but before Campbell. See Hofbauer, 337 F.3d at 716. Henley also unpersuasively relies on Rose v. Mitchell for the proposition that an “indictment returned by [an] unconstitutionally constituted grand jury [must] be quashed.” 443 U.S. 545, 551 (1979). Rose, however, concerned an African-American defendant challenging the exclusion of African-Americans from the grand jury and relied on the principle that “[a] criminal defendant ‘is entitled to require that the State not deliberately and systematically deny to members of his race the right to participate as jurors in the administration of justice.’” Id. (quoting Alexander v. Louisiana, 405 U.S. 625, 628–29 (1972) (emphasis added)). Even if Rose reaches gender, Henley, a male, could only challenge the exclusion of other males from the grand jury. Thus, Rose does not alter our conclusion on Henley’s due process claim. Henley also raises a Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section challenge to the foreperson of his grand jury. Regardless of the logical soundness of arguing that one person should represent a fair cross-section of a community, the Supreme Court has never allowed defendants to challenge the composition of their grand juries based on the Sixth Amendment. While some federal courts have permitted a fair-cross-section challenge to a state grand jury, see, e.g., Murphy v. Johnson, 205 F.3d 809, 817–19 (5th Cir. 2000); O’Neal v. Delo, 44 F.3d 655, 662 (8th Cir. 1995); Ramseur v. Beyer, 983 F.2d 1215, 1236–37 (3d Cir. 1992), we may grant Henley relief only if this right was clearly established by the Supreme Court as of 1999, and we hold that it was not.