Opinion ID: 2076468
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Heading: The Use of Peremptory Challenges to Exclude Black People, as a Group, From Serving on a Particular Jury is Incompatible With the Right to a Trial by Jury Guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.

Text: The sixth amendment to the Federal Constitution provides that: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. (U.S. Const., amend. VI.) It is part of the established tradition in the use of juries as instruments of public justice that the jury be a body truly representative of the community. ( Smith v. Texas (1940), 311 U.S. 128, 130, 85 L.Ed. 84, 86, 61 S.Ct. 164, 165.) In Taylor v. Louisiana (1975), 419 U.S. 522, 528, 42 L.Ed.2d 690, 697, 95 S.Ct. 692, 697, the Supreme Court held that the selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The use of peremptory challenges to exclude black persons from jury service violates the sixth amendment for the same reason that the venire selection system in Taylor excluding women from the jury venire unless they volunteered was unconstitutional: The purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power  to make available the commonsense judgment of the community as a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps overconditioned or biased response of a judge. Duncan v. Louisiana [(1968), 391 U.S. 145, 155-56, 20 L.Ed.2d 491, 499-500, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 1450]. This prophylactic vehicle is not provided if the jury pool is made up of only special segments of the populace or if large, distinctive groups are excluded from the pool.    Restricting jury service to only special groups or excluding identifiable segments playing major roles in the community cannot be squared with the constitutional concept of jury trial. (419 U.S. 522, 530, 42 L.Ed.2d 690, 698, 95 S.Ct. 692, 698.) The intentional exclusion of black prospective jurors from a particular jury through the use of peremptory challenges prevents them, as a group, from participating on that jury in the same way as the venire selection system held unconstitutional in Taylor, and for that reason this practice also violates the sixth amendment. The majority, however, in Williams and in this case, interprets Taylor as only prohibiting the deliberate exclusion of groups from the venire, and as not limiting in any way deliberate exclusions that occur later in the jury selection process. (See People v. Williams (1983), 97 Ill.2d 252, 279.) The distinction the majority attempts to draw is meaningless, for the ultimate purpose of the cross section requirement, announced in Taylor, is achieved not when the venire is selected, but when the jury is deliberating: When any large and identifiable segment of the community is excluded from jury service, the effect is to remove from the jury room qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience, the range of which is unknown and perhaps unknowable. It is not necessary to assume that the excluded group will consistently vote as a class in order to conclude, as we do, that its exclusion deprives the jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance in any case that may be presented. ( Peters v. Kiff (1972), 407 U.S. 493, 503-04, 33 L.Ed.2d 83, 94, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 2169 (opinion of Marshall, J., joined by Douglas and Stewart, JJ.) (holding that white defendant has standing to raise exclusion of black jurors from grand and petit juries).) (See also, Ballard v. United States (1946), 329 U.S. 187, 194, 91 L.Ed. 181, 186, 67 S.Ct. 261, 264 (a flavor, a distinct quality is lost if either sex is excluded from participating on the jury).) The appellate court in this case correctly observed that [t]he desired goal of interaction of a cross section of the community does not occur within the venire, but rather, is only effectuated by the petit jury that is selected and sworn to try the issues. 106 Ill. App.3d 1034, 1036. Also underlying the Supreme Court's decision in Taylor is the ideal that qualifications for jury service should be evaluated on an individual and not on a group basis. The court in Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co. (1946), 328 U.S. 217, 220, 90 L.Ed. 1181, 1185, 66 S.Ct. 984, 985-86, in the exercise of its supervisory jurisdiction over the administration of justice in the Federal courts, reversed a case decided before a jury because all wage earners and working people had been systematically excluded from jury service. The court recognized that complete representation of every group on every jury would be impossible, but the court decried any practice that allowed governmental officials the discretion to exclude people from participation on juries solely because of their group membership: [P]rospective jurors shall be selected by court officials without systematic and intentional exclusion of any of these groups. Recognition must be given to the fact that those eligible for jury service are to be found in every stratum of society. Jury competence is an individual rather than a group or class matter. That fact lies at the very heart of the jury system. To disregard it is to open the door to class distinctions and discriminations which are abhorrent to the democratic ideals of trial by jury. (Emphasis added.) (328 U.S. 217, 220, 90 L.Ed. 1181, 1185, 66 S.Ct. 984, 985-86.) (See also State v. Chosa (1982), 108 Wis.2d 392, 321 N.W.2d 280 (trial court may not exclude prospective jurors because of group membership where no individualized assessment of qualifications made at voir dire ).) The use of peremptory challenges to exclude blacks from jury service solely because of their race is no more in keeping with the concept of individualized evaluation of a juror's qualifications than was the exclusion of women in Taylor and of wage earners in Thiel. Any deliberate exclusion of all members of a group from participating on a jury violates the sixth amendment whether it occurs at the voir dire or when the members of the venire are selected. So long as our legislature allows peremptory challenges, the problem is to discover in each case whether peremptory challenges are being used to exclude black people from participating on the jury solely on the basis of their race, or whether they are being used against individual black persons for some legitimate purpose. The majority argues that the same standard adopted by the Supreme Court in Swain under the equal protection clause should also be applied under the sixth amendment to determine whether prosecutors are using their peremptory challenges for legitimate purposes. The Swain requirement of systematic exclusion of black jurors in case after case, however, presents a nearly insurmountable hurdle for an individual defendant, and I have found only two cases decided since Swain where defendants actually established this systematic exclusion. State v. Brown (La. 1979), 371 So.2d 751 and State v. Washington (La. 1979), 375 So.2d 1162 (both involving conduct of prosecutors in the same jurisdiction at the same time). It is obvious why defendants have established so little misuse of peremptory challenges under the Swain standard. The prosecutors are the only people who know why peremptory challenges are used against black persons, and they are not telling anyone. It seems to me that if this court imposes the Swain requirements on defendants, the only way defendants could get solid evidence on the misuse of peremptory challenges in case after case would be to subpoena assistant State's Attorneys and even State's Attorneys to testify at a hearing during voir dire or in a civil class action suit by prospective black jurors or black defendants. Certainly this would provide a spectacle that should be avoided if any alternative is available, and I submit one which this court is inviting by this decision and by its prior decisions in Davis and Williams. The prosecutor skips over a problem that Justice Marshall recently identified when he observed that the case after case requirement of Swain does not adequately protect an individual defendant's constitutional rights: Since every defendant is entitled to equal protection of the laws and should therefore be free from the invidious discrimination of state officials, it is difficult to understand why several must suffer discrimination because of the prosecutor's use of peremptory challenges before any defendant can object. ( McCray v. New York (1983), 461 U.S. 961, 964-65, 77 L.Ed.2d 1322, 1324, 103 S.Ct. 2438, 2440 (Marshall and Brennan, JJ., dissenting from denial of certiorari ).) Justice Nix of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has put it another way: Is justice to sit supinely by and be flaunted in case after case before a remedy is available? Is justice only obtainable after repeated injustices are demonstrated? Commonwealth v. Martin (1975), 461 Pa. 289, 299, 336 A.2d 290, 295 (Nix, J., dissenting). Recognizing these defects in the Swain standard, the appellate court adopted a fair and workable approach for determining when peremptory challenges are used for illegitimate purposes. (106 Ill. App.3d 1034, 1040.) When it reasonably appears to the trial court that the prosecution is systematically using peremptory challenges to exclude black jurors from the jury solely on the basis of race, the prosecution must come forward with evidence that its challenges were based on some legitimate, nonracial motive. This is the same test as that used by the courts of California ( People v. Wheeler (1978), 22 Cal.3d 258, 583 P.2d 748, 148 Cal. Rptr. 890), Massachusetts ( Commonwealth v. Soares (1979), 377 Mass. 461, 387 N.E.2d 499, cert. denied (1979), 444 U.S. 881, 62 L.Ed.2d 110, 100 S.Ct. 170), and New Mexico ( State v. Crespin (1980), 94 N.M. 486, 612 P.2d 716) for regulating the use of peremptory challenges by State prosecutors, and courts in those States have had no apparent difficulty in applying it. The advantage of the Payne standard is that it forces the only people who know why the prosecution has used its peremptory challenges, that is the prosecutors themselves, to disclose that information. Moreover the Payne standard does not unreasonably restrict the legitimate uses of peremptory challenges. All that is required is that the prosecutor identify a legitimate, nonfrivolous rationale for challenging the black jurors, and this is only required in cases where the defense has already established a prima facie case that the prosecution has been using peremptory challenges to exclude black people solely on the basis of race. (See, e.g, Commonwealth v. Smith (Mass. App. 1981), 428 N.E.2d 348, 353 n. 7.) If a constitutional violation can be avoided under the Payne standard without too much difficulty, one may reasonably ask why adopt it at all? The answer is that prosecuting attorneys are both lawyers and public officials, and when acting in these capacities, they have both a professional and a legal obligation to obey the law. By holding that prosecutors cannot use peremptory challenges to exclude black persons from jury service solely on the basis of race, we would also require State's Attorneys to police the behavior of their assistants to ensure that they do not engage in unethical and illegal conduct. This is, after all, the level at which regulation of these unlawful practices will be most effective. The record in this case adequately established a prima facie case that the prosecutor was using peremptory challenges to exclude black jurors solely on the basis of their race. As the majority points out, the record indicates that 10 black persons were called to the box during voir dire. Three were excluded for cause, leaving seven potential black jurors. The prosecution exercised six of the eight peremptory challenges that it used in this case to exclude all but one of the remaining black prospective jurors. To conclude, the prosecution used its peremptory challenges to exclude six out of seven available black jurors while it used them to exclude only two out of 23 available white jurors. These recitations alone indicate to me a deliberate plan, to which the defendant called the court's attention, to keep black persons from serving on the jury. As the appellate court observed, the black jurors who were excluded are fairly heterogeneous, and the single distinguishing characteristic that [they] shared is their race. (106 Ill. App.3d 1034, 1045.) When the information obtained at voir dire concerning the excluded black jurors is compared with the information obtained about the selected jurors, no reason for their exclusion is apparent. (See the appendix to this dissent, 99 Ill.2d at 159.) Although all of the black prospective jurors who were excluded were single, the People admitted in the appellate court that they did not notice this common characteristic until preparation of the case on appeal. See 106 Ill. App.3d 1034, 1045. It is important to note that this is not a case where jurors have individually admitted in voir dire that their group membership would prevent them from fairly trying the issues before them. (Compare Witherspoon v. Illinois (1968), 391 U.S. 510, 520, 20 L.Ed.2d 776, 784, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 1776 with Lockett v. Ohio (1978), 438 U.S. 586, 596-97, 57 L.Ed.2d 973, 984-85, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 2960.) In this case the court specifically asked the prospective jurors whether their judgment would be influenced one way or another by the race of the defendant. Only one prospective juror said that he would be influenced by the defendant's race and he was promptly excused for cause. Moreover, the defendant's prima facie case is not destroyed by the circumstance that one black person did serve on the jury that convicted him. The evil lies in the    wholesale exclusion of a large class    in disregard of the high standards of jury selection. ( Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co. (1946), 328 U.S. 217, 225, 90 L.Ed. 1181, 1187, 66 S.Ct. 984, 988.) The appellate court correctly held in this case that [s]ystematic and affirmative racial exclusion of available black jurors by the State which results in only one black being seated as a juror is no less evil and no less constitutionally prohibited than the same procedure which results in the total exclusion of blacks. 106 Ill. App.3d 1034, 1045. Based on all these circumstances, I believe that the appellate court was correct when it concluded that: [I]t should have reasonably appeared to the trial court that the prosecutor was using peremptory challenges to systematically exclude blacks from the jury solely because they were blacks. At that stage, the trial court should have required the prosecutor to demonstrate, by whatever facts and circumstances existed, that blacks were not systematically excluded solely because they were blacks. The failure of the trial court to impose such a requirement on the prosecutor at that stage was error, and the error is of such magnitude that the convictions must be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial. 106 Ill. App.3d 1034, 1045-46.