Opinion ID: 710910
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Iowa Jury-Selection Plan

Text: 5 Although we affirm Rogers' convictions, we do so reluctantly with respect to Rogers' challenge of the Iowa jury-selection plan. We recognize that we are bound by a previous decision by our court, United States v. Garcia, 991 F.2d 489, 491 (8th Cir.1993), which held that the present Iowa plan withstands constitutional scrutiny. Nevertheless, we feel compelled to discuss our concerns on this issue and to encourage the court en banc to reconsider Garcia on this appeal. 6 Rogers contends that the Iowa jury-selection plan violated his Sixth Amendment right to be tried by a jury made up of a fair cross-section of the community. In the Southern District of Iowa, prospective jurors are selected from a master jury wheel, which is filled every four years with names from voter registration lists or lists of actual voters. At Rogers' trial, eighty-nine jurors were summoned for jury selection; all eighty-nine were white. At oral argument, Rogers' counsel urged our court to consider the difficulty of convincing an African-American client that the system that produced this jury pool is fair. Public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system, with respect to community participation in jury trials, is a concern the Supreme Court explicitly recognized in Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 530, 95 S.Ct. 692, 697, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975). 7 In Garcia, our court recognized that the Sixth Amendment guarantees a criminal defendant a jury made up of a fair cross-section of the community. 991 F.2d at 491 (citing Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. at 530, 95 S.Ct. at 697). For a defendant to establish a prima facie violation of the constitutional fair cross-section requirement, he must show: 8 (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a 'distinctive' group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process. 9 Id. (citing Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 668, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979)). While recognizing African Americans constitute a distinctive group, id. (citing Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972)), our court in Garcia declined to consider whether African-American representation in Iowa venires is fair and reasonable. Instead, it determined that Garcia failed to demonstrate that the jury-selection process systematically excluded African Americans from representation in jury pools, and thus, he failed to establish a prima facie violation. Id. 10 In rejecting Garcia's argument of systematic exclusion, our court introduced an element of intentional discrimination not required by the Supreme Court. Our court stated: 11 Garcia does not contend that Iowa law imposes any suspect voter registration qualifications or that the Plan is administered in a discriminatory manner. Garcia has not made any showing that African Americans or Hispanics are systematically excluded from the jury-selection process. A numerical disparity alone does not violate any of Garcia's rights and thus will not support a challenge to the Iowa Plan. 12 Id. at 492. In contrast, the Supreme Court, in Duren v. Missouri, found a prima facie cross-section violation based largely on numerical evidence: 13 [Petitioner's] undisputed demonstration that a large discrepancy occurred not just occasionally but in every weekly venire for a period of nearly a year manifestly indicates that the cause of the underrepresentation was systematic--that is, inherent in the particular jury-selection process. 14 439 U.S. at 366, 99 S.Ct. at 669. See also, United States v. Perez-Hernandez, 672 F.2d 1380, 1384 n. 5 (11th Cir.1982) (In a fair cross section analysis, purposeful discrimination is irrelevant since the emphasis is purely on the structure of the jury venire.). 15 In support of his constitutional challenge, Rogers presents the same numerical evidence of underrepresentation as presented to the court in Garcia and which our court declined to consider at that time. We now consider the evidence because we find it probative of both the second and third Duren elements and because it buttresses our request for reconsideration of Garcia. According to the 1990 census, African Americans constituted 1.87% (31,656 out of 1,485,443) of the general population in the Central Division of the Southern District of Iowa. Yet only 1.29% (70 out of 5,424) were included in the petit jury pool in the Central Division from March 1987 through March 1992. 16 Comparing the number of African Americans in the general population with the number of those included in the jury pools, Rogers provides two separate calculations for the court: 1) the absolute disparity, which is the difference between the two figures (1.87 and 1.29), or 0.579%, and 2) the comparative disparity, 1 which is 30.96%. Although utilizing the absolute disparity calculation may seem intuitive, its result understates the systematic representative deficiencies; the percentage disparity can never exceed the percentage of African Americans in the community. Thus, in this case, even if African Americans were excluded entirely from the lists of potential jurors, the maximum disparity, under an absolute calculation, would be 1.87%. In the case of total exclusion, however, the comparative disparity figure would be 100%. While we recognize both figures provide a simplified statistical shorthand for a complex issue, the comparative disparity calculation provides a more meaningful measure of systematic impact vis-a-vis the distinctive group: it calculates the representation of African Americans in jury pools relative to the African-American community rather than relative to the entire population. Contra United States v. Clifford, 640 F.2d 150, 155 (8th Cir.1981) (our court has declined to adopt the comparative disparity concept as a better means of calculating underrepresentation). In this case, over a five-year period, Iowa's jury-selection system underrepresented the African-American community by over thirty percent. In other words, a black was thirty percent less likely to be called to serve on a jury than if the composition of the source lists perfectly mirrored the community. 17 Interestingly, Rogers also states that if the jury-selection plan in Iowa randomly selected jurors from the entire citizenry, the probability of calling only 70 African Americans out of 5,424 potential jurors is less than 0.1%. Although Rogers does not provide the calculation for this figure, the government does not dispute it and we take note of it as part of the record. The extremely low probability that the underrepresentation would have occurred by chance alone provides further evidence that the system itself contributed to the lack of African-American participation in the venire pools. 18 Defendant's statistics establish, at a minimum, a prima facie case that blacks are being systematically excluded from jury service in the Southern District of Iowa, and that, unless some justification is forthcoming, the system in place there does not comport with our constitution. See Duren, 439 U.S. at 367-68, 99 S.Ct. at 670. Thus, this case warrants reconsideration by our court. 2