Opinion ID: 866145
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Race and Ethnicity Instruction

Text: Díaz-Arias has also lodged an objection to the district court's refusal to provide the jury with his requested instruction on race, ethnicity and national origin. The requested instruction stated the following: It would be improper for you to consider, in reaching your decision as to whether the government sustained its burden of proof, any personal feelings you may have about the defendant's race or ethnicity, or national -41- origin, or his or any witness' immigration status. The district judge declined to give this instruction, stating I don't think I will give that specifically. I will emphasize that they are to be completely fair-minded and impartial and not to be influenced by private views of any of the instances in the case, but I won't be any more specific than that. Instead, the court opted to charge the jury with the following instruction: You should determine what facts have been shown or not based solely on a fair consideration of the evidence. That proposition means two things, of course. First of all, you'll be completely fair-minded and impartial, swayed neither by prejudice, nor sympathy, by personal likes or dislikes toward anybody involved in the case, but simply to fairly and impartially judge the evidence and what it means. In his brief, Díaz-Arias points to surveys which have established that large portions of the community believe that drug trafficking is more prevalent amongst Hispanics than it is with any other ethnic group. He also provides citations to other studies which have indicated that: (1) Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses than are Caucasians; and (2) the correlation between race and drug activity is a popular misconception. Therefore, Díaz-Arias contends his proposed instruction was necessary to dispel any notion among the jurors that being Hispanic in and of itself is evidence of guilt in a drug crime. By not giving the instruction, he argues, the district -42- court diminished the burden of proof and allowed a misconception to infect the jury trial process. He contends the district court's lapse in this regard constituted reversible error. We reject that contention. Properly preserved challenges to jury instructions are reviewed de novo, taking into account the charge as a whole and the body of evidence presented at trial. United States v. Sampson, 486 F.3d 13, 29 (1st Cir. 2007). A district court's refusal to provide a requested instruction is reversible error only when the requested instruction (1) was substantively correct; (2) was not substantially covered elsewhere in the charge; and (3) concerned an important point in the case so that the failure to give the instruction seriously impaired the defendant's ability to present his defense. United States v. Willson, 708 F.3d 47, 54-55 (1st Cir. 2013). Cases satisfying all three [of these] factors are 'relatively rare.' Id. (quoting United States v. González, 570 F.3d 16, 21 (1st Cir. 2009)). In this case, Díaz-Arias' instruction fails to surmount the second prong of the test. The district court adequately instructed the jury that it should be completely fair-minded and impartial, swayed neither by prejudice, nor sympathy, by personal likes or dislikes toward anybody involved in the case . . . . Díaz-Arias' proposed instruction was a more specific version of the court's instruction; it merely recited the possible forms of -43- prejudice that a person might have against Díaz-Arias: race, ethnicity, national origin or immigration status.12 The court's instructions effectively incorporated the essence of Díaz-Arias' request; they advised the jurors that they could not be swayed by any form of prejudice towards anybody involved in the case, which obviously included the defendant. See United States v. Rose, 104 F.3d 1408, 1416 (1st Cir. 1997) ([T]rial court's charge need not use the exact wording requested by the defendant so long as the instruction incorporates the substance of the defendant's request.); United States v. McGill, 953 F.2d 10, 12 (1st Cir. 1992) (similar); Calhoun v. Acme Cleveland Corp., 798 F.2d 559, 564 (1st Cir. 1986) (holding that instruction to jury to avoid bias or prejudice was sufficient, despite defendant requesting an anticorporate bias instruction). Thus, the district court's decision to use a general term such as prejudice, without listing the examples of concern to Díaz-Arias, does not constitute reversible error. Our conclusion here is also based upon a number of factors. We first note that a plurality of the Supreme Court has stated that [t]here is no constitutional presumption of juror bias either for or against members of any particular racial or ethnic groups. Rosales-López v. United States, 451 U.S. 182, 190 12 The proposed instruction also referred to the defendant, while the court's instruction referred to anybody involved in this case. -44- (1981). Although Díaz-Arias expresses a concern in his brief as to one or more of the jury members possibly bringing to the process some bias or just some inkling that the drug problem in this country is created by the presence of Hispanic's [sic] in our society, nothing in the record supports such an assertion. The district court docket reflects that Díaz-Arias was able to propose voir dire questions that went directly to the issue of prejudice on account of race, ethnicity, national origin and immigration status. Díaz-Arias has not argued before us that the district court refused to ask the venire those questions, or that the venire members who ultimately served as jurors demonstrated signs of harboring any kind of prejudice towards him. Neither can he point to any incident during the proceedings which would have given rise to a heightened concern of potential bias in any of the jurors. Díaz-Arias' reliance on cases such as Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231 (2005) and United States v. Casas, 425 F.3d 23 (1st Cir. 2005), is also misplaced. While the Court in Miller-El did reaffirm that racial discrimination by the State in jury selection offends the Equal Protection Clause, 545 U.S. at 238, there are no allegations in this case that the prosecutor discriminatorily used her peremptory strikes against venire members on account of their race or ethnic background. In Casas, on the other hand, we did warn that [w]hen a non-frivolous suggestion is made that a jury may be biased or tainted by some incident, the -45- district court must undertake an adequate inquiry to determine whether the alleged incident occurred and if so, whether it was prejudicial. 425 F.3d at 48 (quoting United States v. GastónBrito, 64 F.3d 11, 12 (1st Cir. 1995)). However, Casas concerned an incident during trial where it was discovered that some of the jurors may have been biased in favor of certain defendants. Here, in contrast, Díaz-Arias has not alleged that any incidents took place during the course of the proceedings which may have called into question the impartiality of the jurors. Furthermore, we emphasize that Díaz-Arias did not inform the district court of his belief that some of the jurors may have been prejudiced against him; much less did he provide the court with any evidence to support such a claim, as he attempts to do on appeal. Accordingly, we see no legal basis to find reversible error in the district court's decision to forgo using the requested instruction.13