Opinion ID: 343369
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Statutory and Constitutional Standards.

Text: Section 1861 of the Act provides: 19 It is the policy of the United States that all litigants in Federal courts entitled to trial by jury shall have the right to grand and petit juries selected at random from a fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes. . . . 20 28 U.S.C. § 1861 (emphasis added). This policy is implemented by the requirement of section 1862 that (n)o citizen shall be excluded from service as a grand or petit juror in the district courts of the United States on account of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or economic status. Section 1863(b)(2) directs the district courts to use voter registration lists or lists of actual voters as the initial sources of names for prospective jurors, with the former being the preferred source, and to prescribe some other source or sources of names in addition to voter lists where necessary to foster the policy and protect the rights secured by sections 1861 and 1862. (Emphasis added). 21 The legislative history of the Act makes it clear that in enacting the above-quoted statutes Congress intended to allow some deviation from an exact demographic reflection of the community and that only great or pronounced disparities were to be remedied by supplementation. See, e. g., 114 Cong.Rec. 1348 (remarks of Congressman Kastenmeir). Thus instead of prescribing an objective statutory standard of necessity for determining when supplementation of voter lists was required, Congress deferred this decision to the courts: 22 The voting list need not perfectly mirror the percentage structure of the community. But any substantial deviations must be corrected by use of supplemental sources. Your committee would leave the definition of substantial to the process of judicial decision. 23 S.Rep.No.891, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. at 17 (1967). 24 Although the Supreme Court has not directly considered the issue, the majority of lower federal courts have responded to this congressional mandate by construing the statutory fair cross section standard as the functional equivalent of the constitutional reasonably representative standard previously developed. E. g., United States v. Whiting, 8 Cir., 538 F.2d 220, 222; Anderson v. Casscles, 2 Cir., 531 F.2d 682, 685 & n. 1 (dictum); United States v. Tijerina, 10 Cir., 446 F.2d 675, 679-81. This construction is supported both by the legislative history of the Act, indicating Congress relied extensively upon the constitutional standard enunciated in prior Supreme Court decisions, and by dictum in the most recent pronouncement of the Court on the jury selection issue: 25 The unmistakable import of this Court's opinions, at least since 1940, . . . and not repudiated by intervening decisions, is 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. Recent federal legislation governing jury selection within the federal court system (The Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968) has a similar thrust. . . . 26 We accept the fair-cross-section requirement (of the Act) as fundamental to the jury trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and are convinced that the requirement has solid foundation. . . . 27 Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 528-30 & n. 11, 95 S.Ct. 692, 697, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (citations omitted). Thus the standard for adjudicating both statutory and constitutional challenges to jury selection plans requires at a minimum that petit juries must be drawn from a source fairly representative of the community and that: 28 . . . the jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community and thereby fail to be reasonably representative thereof. 29 Id. at 538, 95 S.Ct. at 702 (emphasis added). In order to demonstrate a violation of this fair-cross-section standard in the present cases, defendants were therefore required to show: (1) that Chicanos and blacks constituted distinctive groups in the community, (2) that these groups were systematically exclude(d) from the jury selection process, 6 and (3) that as a result of such exclusion (thereby) the jury pools fail(ed) to be reasonably representative of the community.
30 With respect to the first of these requirements, the district court presumed blacks comprised a distinct class in the Colorado community. In the absence of specific evidence of local prejudice directed toward Chicanos, 7 the court assumed Chicanos were a cognizable class as well. United States v. Test, D.Colo., 399 F.Supp. 683, 689. In the absence of factual findings by the district court regarding the cognizability of blacks and Chicanos, we likewise presume and assume, without deciding, that blacks and Chicanos respectively constituted distinctive groups in the (Colorado) community. 31
32 Assuming defendants satisfied the requirement of showing blacks and Chicanos constituted distinctive groups, defendants still had the burden of proving that these groups were systematically excluded from the jury selection process. Two lines of Supreme Court cases have been found in which allegations of systematic exclusion have proven successful. In the so-called rule of exclusion cases, proof that a cognizable group had been totally excluded from jury service over a substantial period of time or had received only token representation has been held sufficient to raise an inference of discrimination and systematic exclusion. E. g., Taylor v. Louisiana, supra; Alexander v. Louisiana, 405 U.S. 625, 92 S.Ct. 1221, 31 L.Ed.2d 536; Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 55 S.Ct. 579, 79 L.Ed. 1074. This inference alone was deemed sufficient to establish a prima facie case of systematic exclusion, and general asseverations of good faith by jury selection officials were deemed insufficient rebuttals. Consequently, the burden was shifted to the state to establish by specific evidence that constitutionally permissible procedures were employed to exclude an entire section of the community. Id. 33 Likewise, in cases where there has been a showing of substantial underrepresentation (short of total exclusion) or systematic decimation of a cognizable group at the various stages of the selection process combined with obvious opportunities for discrimination, the Court has been willing to infer discrimination in the selection process. E. g., Turner v. Fouche, 396 U.S. 346, 90 S.Ct. 532, 24 L.Ed.2d 567; Carter v. Jury Commission, 396 U.S. 320, 90 S.Ct. 518, 24 L.Ed.2d 549; Whitus v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 545, 87 S.Ct. 643, 17 L.Ed.2d 599; Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759. Again, once a prima facie case of exclusion was established the state's general protestations of good faith proved unavailing. Where the evidence of underrepresentation was not sufficient to raise the inference of discrimination, however, general explanations and averments of good faith by government officials were deemed sufficient rebuttals. E. g., Swain v. Alabama, supra. 34 In the present cases, defendants conceded that blacks and Chicanos had not been totally excluded from the selection process and that their representation was more than token. Defendants likewise admitted that no evidence of systematic decimation or obvious opportunities for discrimination had been discovered in the selection process. Moreover, although defendants did allege that Chicanos and blacks, for a variety of reasons, failed to register to vote in the same percentages as whites, no evidence was presented indicating that different registration standards were applied to whites and non-whites or that the state had erected affirmative barriers to or deliberately interfered with the registration process. 8 Rather defendants' attempt to establish a prima facie case of systematic exclusion was based entirely on a showing of statistical disparity. 35 Defendants urge on appeal that this statistical disparity alone was sufficient to support the inference that blacks and Chicanos had been systematically excluded from the jury selection process and that the burden should therefore have shifted to the government to prove by specific evidence that the underrepresentation was produced by constitutionally permissible selection procedures. We have been cited to no case, however, in which a jury selection challenge based solely on statistical evidence has been successful. To the contrary the only case cited by the parties or disclosed by our research in which a similar question was considered by the Supreme Court is Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759. 36 In Swain a black defendant demonstrated that although 26% of the males over 21 in the county were black, only 10% to 15% of the grand and petit jury panels over a substantial period of years had been black. 9 Id. at 205, 85 S.Ct. 824. Notwithstanding the fact that the venires from which the grand and petit juries were drawn unquestionably contained a smaller proportion of the Negro community than of the white community, however, the Swain Court concluded that (n)either the jury roll nor the venire need be a perfect mirror of the community or accurately reflect the proportionate strength of every identifiable group. Id. at 208, 85 S.Ct. at 829. Regarding the degree of inaccuracy which was constitutionally permissible the Court stated, (w)e cannot say that purposeful discrimination based on race alone is satisfactorily proved by showing that an identifiable group in a community is underrepresented by as much as 10%. Id. at 208-09, 85 S.Ct. at 829. Moreover, since the percentage of blacks on jury venires in Swain had been as low as 10% during the period in question, compared with 26% in the presumptively eligible population, the Court also implicitly held that a prima facie case of systematic exclusion was not established by demonstrating a disparity of as much as 16%. Id. at 205, 85 S.Ct. 824. 37 In the present cases the maximum disparity demonstrated by defendants between the percentages of blacks and Chicanos in the voting-age community and on the master jury rolls was approximately 4%. Since this figure is well below the 10-16% range of disparity approved in Swain, the district court properly concluded defendants had failed to establish a prima facie case of systematic exclusion and accepted the government's general explanations and asseverations of good faith in rebuttal. 10 3. Causation. 38 In light of our conclusion that defendants failed to establish a prima facie case of systematic exclusion, it is unnecessary to consider whether this alleged exclusion caused the jury panels to fail to be reasonably representative of the community as would appear to be required by the Supreme Court's language in Taylor v. Louisiana, supra, and as in fact required by the district court. Nor need we decide at this juncture the validity of defendants' contention that a showing of causation is superfluous and that a demonstration of substantial underrepresentation of a cognizable group on the master jury wheel necessarily entails a showing that panels selected from that wheel were not reasonably representative of the community. 39