Opinion ID: 1661584
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: defendant's rightsjury selection

Text: The appellant argues the selection of the jury from only a portion of the territorial jurisdiction of the court violated his constitutional rights of due process and the equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment and also his right to a jury trial. Article I, §§ 9, 10, Iowa Constitution. One important requirement of due process is that the defendant be tried by a fair and impartial jury. See Note, Constitutional Law: State Jury Selection Procedure Held a Violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, 1967 Duke L.J. 346, 350 (1967). The selection of a nonrepresentative jury may preclude a defendant from receiving an impartial trial. The United States Supreme Court said in Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 86, 62 S.Ct. 457, 472, 86 L.Ed. 680, 707 (1942) (alleged exclusion of women except for member of League of Women Voters):    Tendencies, no matter how slight, toward the selection of jurors by any method other than a process which will insure a trial by a representative group are undermining processes weakening the institution of jury trial, and should be sturdily resisted. That the motives influencing such tendencies may be of the best must not blind us to the dangers of allowing any encroachment whatsoever on this essential right. (loc. cit. 315 U.S. at p. 86, 62 S.Ct. at p. 472). One standard that courts have adopted for jury selection practices is that the panel be from a cross-section of the community or that it be a body truly representative of the community. See Labat v. Bennett, 365 F.2d 698, 720 (5 Cir. 1966); State v. Madison, 240 Md. 265, 213 A.2d 880, 885 (1965); Allen v. State, 110 Ga. App. 56, 137 S.E.2d 711, 713 (1964); Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 524, 528, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776, 786, 788 (1968) (Douglas concurring). Note, Duke L.J. 346, 350 (1967). The Supreme Court has stated this requirement in several cases: 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, 311 U.S. 128, 130, 61 S. Ct. 164, 165, 85 L.Ed. 84, 86 (1940) (exclusion of blacksstate court). And its exercise (of jury selection) must always accord with the fact that the proper functioning of the jury system, and, indeed, our democracy itself, requires that the jury be a `body truly representative of the community', and not the organ of any special group or class. Glasser v. United States, 315 U. S. 60, 86, 62 S.Ct. 457, 472, 86 L.Ed. 680, 707 (1942). Our duty to protect the federal constitutional rights of all does not mean we must or should impose on states our conception of the proper source of jury lists, so long as the source reasonably reflects a cross-section of the population suitable in character and intelligence for that civic duty. Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 474, 73 S.Ct. 397, 416, 97 L.Ed. 469, 498 (1953). (dictum). And in Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217, 219, 66 S.Ct. 984, 985, 90 L. Ed. 1181 (exclusion of daily wage-earners) (a federal civil case decided under the Court's supervisory power), the Court said, The American tradition of trial by jury,    necessarily contemplates an impartial jury drawn from a cross-section of the community. The Georgia Court of Appeals said in Allen v. State, 110 Ga.App. 56, 137 S.E.2d 711, 713 (1964), (white civil rights worker complaining of exclusion of blacks):    The exclusionary practice condemned by the Fourteenth Amendment does not depend upon the exclusion from juries of a group to which the defendant belongs or identifies himself, but on the resulting failure of the jury to represent a cross section of the community.   . In the present case, while the defendant and his witnesses were all rural residents of Story County, the jury was drawn exclusively from residents of the City of Ames. As petitioner argues, it is reasonable to believe that the rural residents may differ from those of the city. Some occupations such as farming, would be excluded when the jury is drawn entirely from the city. The defendant in this case is not a farmer although some of his witnesses were. Allen v. State, 110 Ga.App. 56, 137 S.E.2d 711 (1964), involving a white civil rights worker's objections that blacks were excluded from the jury, is authority for the proposition that the defendant need not be a member of the excluded class. Also, State v. Madison, 240 Md. 265, 213 A.2d 880, 882-886 (1965). While exclusion because of race has been involved in many of the jury selection cases, the exclusion of other groups may also violate the defendant's constitutional guarantees. Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 74 S.Ct. 667, 98 L. Ed. 866 (1954) (Mexican-Americans); Kentucky v. Powers, 139 F. 452 (C.C.Ky. 1905), (political party); State ex rel. Passer v. Co. Bd. of Renville Co., 171 Minn. 177, 213 N.W. 545 (1927) (women); State v. Madison, 240 Md. 265, 213 A.2d 880 (1965) (belief in God required); Labat v. Bennett, 365 F.2d 698 (5 Cir. 1966) wage earners and blacks).    But community prejudices are not static, and from time to time other differences from the community norm may define other groups which need the same protection. Whether such a group exists within a community is a question of fact. When the existence of a distinct class is demonstrated, and it is further shown that the laws, as written or as applied, single out that class for different treatment not based on some reasonable classification, the guarantees of the Constitution have been violated.   . Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 478, 74 S.Ct. 667, 670, 98 L.Ed. 866, 870 (1954). (Mexican-Americans.)    We of course recognize that the Fourteenth Amendment reaches not only arbitrary class exclusions from jury service based on race or color, but also all other exclusions which `single out' any class of persons `for different treatment not based on some reasonable classification.'   . Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U.S. 57, 60, 82 S.Ct. 159, 7 L.Ed.2d 118, 121 (1961) (womenheld not violation).    This does not mean, of course, that every jury must contain representatives of all the economic, social, religious, racial, political and geographical groups of the community; frequently such complete representation would be impossible. But it does mean that prospective jurors shall be selected by court officials without systematic and intentional exclusion of any of these groups.   . Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217, 220, 66 S.Ct. 984, 90 L.Ed. 1181 (1946) (exclusion of daily wage earners). (Emphasis added.) While Thiel was decided on the basis of the Supreme Court's supervisory power over the federal courts and not on constitutional grounds,    the principles discussed in those opinions are applicable to the issue of the citizen's rights in State courts to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. Allen v. State, 110 Ga.App. 56, 137 S.E.2d 711, 714 (1964). Also see, Labat v. Bennett, 365 F.2d 698, 722 (5 Cir. 1966). The majority opinion cites United States v. Gottfried, 165 F.2d 360 (2 Cir. 1948). In that case, the Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the jury selection practices in the Southern District of New York which excluded heavily rural counties. The court pointed out that there were rural areas within the counties from which the panel was drawn, that the inclusion of the eight rural counties would only increase the likely number of rural jurors on a particular jury from one to two, and that the bulk of the population was in the three counties from which the jury was drawn (only 550,000 of 4,400,000 total population of the district lived in the excluded area). (165 F.2d at pp. 363-364). The court felt this was a valid practice under the statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1865(a), allowing the court to divide the district for purposes of an impartial trial, economy, and ease of attendance. (165 F.2d at p. 364). The court did note that there could not be deliberate discrimination against geographical areas in jury selection:    jurors must be drafted `without systematic and intentional exclusion' of any `geographical,' as well as of any `social, religious, racial' or `political' group; and that may well forbid the officials who draw up the lists from excluding any part of the district at their own choice. We assume that they may not do so; but if they do not, `geographical' uniformity is satisfied   . (loc. cit. 165 F.2d at p. 364). Another case cited in the majority opinion is Crawford v. State, 408 P.2d 1002 (Alaska 1965). In that case, jurors were called only from the area within 15 miles of Anchorage. The court noted that seventy percent of the population lived within that area but that it included only one-half of one percent of the total area. While the majority of natives, Eskimos and farmers lived outside of this area, nonetheless a substantial number of these persons lived within the area from which the jury was drawn. (408 P.2d at p. 1007). The court felt that Anchorage and the surrounding area could give a fair cross-section of the community. (408 P.2d at p. 1009). Appellee's brief cites Liskowitz v. State, 229 Wis. 636, 282 N.W. 103, 106 (1938):    (defendant contends) that because Waukesha county is divided into two municipal court districts and the municipal courts have jurisdiction to try the offenses charged against the defendant, the jury should have been drawn from the municipal court district in which the offense charged was committed. Had the prosecution been laid in a municipal court of the county, no doubt the jury trying him should and would have been selected from the district comprising that court's territorial jurisdiction. But the jurisdiction of the municipal court is concurrent with that of the circuit court in criminal cases. The circuit court had jurisdiction. The trial being in the circuit court, it seems manifest that the jury was properly drawn from the county.   . (Emphasis added). United States v. Gottfried, and Liskowitz v. State, both supra, would appear to be in favor of appellant's contention that the jury should have been drawn from the county since the entire county is within the municipal court's territorial jurisdiction.