Opinion ID: 1830727
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: disparate effects

Text: Defendant secondly asserts that the system contained factors that could be anticipated to disparately affect black prospective jurors, yet failed to account for that disparate effect. For example, defendant argues that Kent County could anticipate that questionnaires returned as undeliverable would more likely have been returned from an area with a large minority population. Similarly, he argues that minorities are more likely to be nonresponsive to juror questionnaires, and Kent County's failure to effectively pursue nonresponsive questionnaire recipients leads to a smaller number of prospective black jurors. He further asserts that allowing excuses for personal reasons, like lack of child care or transportation, also leads to a smaller number of black prospective jurors because black Americans are more likely to suffer from these types of problems. These problems, however, are not inherent in the particular jury selection process formerly used in Kent County. First, [t]he inability to serve juror questionnaires because they were returned as undeliverable is not due to the system itself, but to outside forces, such as demographic changes. Rioux, supra at 658. Kent County is not required to account for demographic changes in its jury selection process; all that is required is that jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups.... Taylor, supra at 538, 95 S.Ct. 692. Similarly, defendant's argument based on Kent County's decision not to pursue prospective jurors that did not return questionnaires fails because it does not address whether a distinctive group was excluded from jury pools. Whether systematic underrepresentation is present turns on the process of selecting venires, Jackman, supra at 1248, and here questionnaires were sent to a random list of names. The manner in which the venire was selected, then, was random. Defendant's suggestion that more was necessary amounts to a request for extra-constitutional action, and Kent County does not have an obligation under the Sixth Amendment to affirmatively counteract `private sector influences'.... United States v. Purdy, 946 F.Supp. 1094, 1104 (D.Conn., 1996) (holding that a failure to send followup jury questionnaires to persons that did not respond to an initial questionnaire was not a constitutional violation). Relevant to this argument as well is defendant's failure to show that any of the persons that did not respond were black. Defendant's contention that exemptions based on personal reasons were a systematic exclusion of black prospective jurors fails as well. Initially, persons granted exemptions were racially unidentified, so the suggestion that granting personal exemptions resulted in fewer black prospective jurors is, at best, supported by generalized testimony. The exemptions could have resulted in fewer white prospective jurors, fewer black prospective jurors, or no change in the jury pool make-up whatsoever. Further, defendant's suggestion that black prospective jurors would be more likely to request personal exemptions is again attributable to outside social forces rather than systematic exclusion of black prospective jurors, and again Kent County was not required to affirmatively counteract outside forces. Also, exemptions based on personal hardship have been held permissible even when the exempted prospective juror's race was known, and the prospective juror was a member of a distinct group. People v. Howard, 1 Cal.4th 1132, 1160-1161, 5 Cal. Rptr.2d 268, 824 P.2d 1315 (1992) (holding that exemptions for hispanic prospective jurors because of doctor's appointments, loss of income, and difficulty being absent from work were not constitutional violations). Therefore, this argument is also not persuasive. I reiterate that a finding that ... disparities are not unconstitutional is not the same as an endorsement of such discrepancies. United States v. Reyes, 934 F.Supp. 553, 566 (S.D.N.Y., 1996). Defendant's arguments should give pause to anyone who suggests that black Americans have achieved socio-economic parity with white Americans. However, defendant's arguments just do not demonstrate that Kent County's jury selection process systematically excluded black prospective jurors.