Opinion ID: 490522
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Evidence on Jury Selection

Text: 11 The historical facts as to the selection of the jury, as found by Chief Judge Brieant, are not substantially in dispute. In accordance with New York procedure, each side was entitled to 15 peremptory challenges. Challenges to prospective jurors were exercised in rounds, with the prosecutor acting first in each round. Persons not excluded after the round in which they were first seated in the jury box were thereafter immune from challenge. See N.Y.Crim.Proc.Law Secs. 270.15, 270.25 (McKinney 1971). 12 In the first round of selection, the State challenged six persons peremptorily. Defense counsel objected on the ground that the prosecutor had systematically excluded every white juror seated in the box. When the prosecutor responded that two of the challenged jurors were Hispanic, the defense stated that they were light-skinned. The court did not, at this point, require the prosecutor to state any reasons for his peremptory challenges. After defense counsel had challenged four of the remaining prospective jurors, there remained two unchallenged jurors; these two were permanently seated; neither was White. 13 In the second round, the prosecutor peremptorily challenged three prospective jurors, two of whom were White. Defense counsel again objected and then peremptorily challenged three prospective jurors, including the only remaining White. Defense counsel stated that they had challenged the remaining White juror because she was virtually illiterate. The court stated that thereafter both sides would be required to state for the record the reasons for their peremptory challenges. Defense counsel persuaded the court, however, that defendants should not be subject to such a requirement. 14 During the following three rounds, seven new prospective jurors were challenged peremptorily: one non-White by the prosecution, and six, including one White, by the defense. After the fifth round, nine jurors, two of whom were White, had been permanently seated. 15 In the sixth selection round the prosecutor peremptorily challenged two of the three new prospective jurors. Defense counsel noted that both challenged jurors were White, and argued that the prosecution was engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination. The trial court asked the prosecutor to place his reasons for these challenges on the record. The prosecutor promptly withdrew one of his challenges and explained that he felt the other challenged juror could not be fair and impartial to his witnesses [b]ased on the fact in terms of age distinction, in terms of her lifestyle as opposed to the People's main witness' lifestyle which has already been made known to the Court, has a long history of criminal involvement. (Minutes of the Jury Selection Proceedings (Minutes) at 103.) 16 At the start of the seventh round, one seat remained to be filled. A White prospective juror was called and was challenged peremptorily by the prosecution. Upon defense counsel's request, the trial court directed the prosecutor to state his reason for the challenge: 17 THE COURT: [M]ake your explanation for the record. That is all. They're preserving their record. They have a right to do that. 18 .... 19 MR. LEVIN: I believe based on his background. 20 THE COURT: That is all. All right. As a computer operator. 21 MR. LEVIN: Right. 22 (Minutes at 137-38.) 23 In the eighth round, neither side challenged the prospective juror called to fill the last seat, and the jury was empaneled. It consisted of three Whites and nine persons who were Black or Hispanic. Neither side had used all of its peremptory challenges. The prosecution had used 12 of its 15 peremptory challenges; eight of these had been used to remove Whites. Petitioners had used 13 of their 15 peremptory challenges; two of these had been used to remove Whites. 24 At the hearing before Chief Judge Brieant, Levin testified as follows with respect to the general reasons for his peremptory challenges: 25 I was looking for a jury that would call the shots and be informed about the arson situation in the Bronx.... An average blue collar type. 26 In addition, I had a problem and that was the informant was a person who had an extensive record, was a minority, a black man ... [a]nd wasn't very bright. So ordinarily when I would have ... people who had police orientations or relatives ... in the police department, what would appear at first glance as a typical prosecution witness may not have suited me for this type of case because they may not have listened to this man.... 27 .... 28 ... [The informant] was a street person. Sometimes people in the so-called ivory towers just can't relate to a street person. You like to get jurors maybe that have come up through the ghetto, maybe jurors that would react to this type of person, jurors that might react emotionally, vociferously, jurors that might react to the evidence and say, yes, this person is guilty. 29 (Transcript of Hearing dated February 13, 1985 (Tr.), at 55-56, 58-59.) He also offered the following specific explanations for his peremptory challenges, excluding only one whose basis he could not recall. He had peremptorily challenged one prospective juror because the juror knew Schreiber's counsel. Three other challenges were based principally on his feeling that those prospective jurors--an electronics student, a bookkeeper, and a computer operator--might not be able to accept the reasonable doubt standard because of their technical backgrounds. One of these three was also challenged because she had a relative in the police department and might be too close to law enforcement to accept Brooks's testimony. Another juror was challenged principally because he had relatives and friends who were police officers. Levin challenged three other prospective jurors who had been victims of various crimes because they too might identify with law enforcement officers rather than with Brooks. The challenge to one of these victims, a maintenance man, was also based on the possibility that he would have too much technical knowledge about the feasibility of the arson plan with which petitioners were charged. A prospective juror who was a schoolteacher was challenged because she was too liberal and intellectual. Two others, a postal worker in his sixties and a telephone company employee, were challenged primarily because each had a lifestyle that differed too much from that of Brooks. 30 When asked about the challenge he had withdrawn, Levin stated: 31 Well, I got a little heat from the defense and despite that fact I didn't think I was challenging whites indiscriminately or with a view towards eliminating them, I felt that she would just be an average juror and go along with it. 32 (Tr. 112.) Levin's notes made during the voir dire were also introduced but the court found them to be of little help. 33 With respect to the racial and ethnic composition of Bronx County jury panels at the time of the trial, it was stipulated that the Commissioner of Jurors kept no records of the races of persons summoned for jury duty in the county, and that 1980 Census statistics published by the New York Department of City Planning indicated that the population of Bronx County was 33.94% White non-Hispanic, 29.83% Black non-Hispanic, and 33.9% Hispanic. Levin testified that in his experience Bronx jury panels were 40% to 60% minority in the period 1980 to 1982. Roman called three witnesses: (1) a Legal Aid Society attorney who testified, based on his observations in criminal cases tried by his office from 1977 to 1985, that Bronx jury panels included 40 to 60% dark skinned persons, some of whom turn[ed] out later on to be of Hispanic descent; (2) a former law clerk to a state Supreme Court Justice in Bronx County who testified, based on his observations of 12 to 15 voir dires from 1978 to 1980, that 60 to 75% of the jurors called were dark skinned; and (3) a Legal Aid Society attorney who had compiled a reasonably contemporaneous survey of July 1983 voir dire practices in New York City courts which showed that jury panels in Bronx County were 46% Black and 17% Hispanic. 2. Chief Judge Brieant's Decision 34 In an opinion reported at 608 F.Supp. 629 (1985), Chief Judge Brieant conditionally granted Roman's petition. He held first that the pattern of challenges exercised by the prosecutor at trial was sufficient to make out a prima facie case to the effect that the challenges [were] exercised deliberately to exclude potential white jurors solely because of their race, placing the State under a duty to come forward and present 'some reason other than group affiliation for the challenges.'  Id. at 634 (quoting McCray, 750 F.2d at 1133). Concluding that the reasons adduced by the State amounted to a lot of lawyer circumlocution, folklore and cant, either unbelievably trivial and incredible, or pointing most strongly to the inescapable inference that the prosecution set out to skew the jury selection process so as to remove as many white jurors as possible, 608 F.Supp. at 635, the court held that the State had failed to meet its burden. 35 In reaching this conclusion, the court found significant, inter alia, the facts that the prosecutor admittedly had sought to obtain jurors with whom the credibility of the prosecution's black accomplice witness would be enhanced, id.; that the prosecutor had made no attempt to challenge for cause the juror purportedly challenged because of his acquaintance with Schreiber's counsel; that despite the prosecutor's avowed desire to avoid jurors  'who were too law and order oriented,'  two of the jurors who were empaneled were relatives of police officers, id.; and that rather than verbalize a reason, the prosecutor withdrew his challenge of a white juror, in the tradition of a child whose fingers had been caught in the cookie jar, id. at 634 (emphasis in original). The court also placed considerable weight on its assessment of Levin's demeanor: 36 Having had the opportunity to observe this witness' demeanor in court and finding inconsistencies throughout his testimony, not only in the above-cited instances, but in various others as well, I find that the reasons given now, three years after the fact, for exercising peremptory challenges cannot be accepted as correct and are pretextual. The prosecutor had the opportunity to give reasons for the challenges at the time of trial. Having foregone that opportunity, the inference that his challenges were racially motivated is quite strong, especially where, as here, out of eleven challenged jurors, ten [including two light-skinned Hispanics] are white. 37 Id. at 635. In light of its conclusion that the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges deliberately, insofar as possible, to effect the invidious purpose of eliminating or reducing the number or proportion of white jurors who would try Roman's case, id., the court held that Roman's case came clearly within the rule of McCray. Id, at 642. 38 Judgment was entered conditionally granting the writ unless the state shall re-try petitioner before an impartial, validly selected jury within 120 days following appellate finality. The State appealed. Roman remains free on bail. 39 C. Schreiber's Habeas Petition and Judge Goettel's Decision 40 Schreiber's habeas petition, followed shortly by a motion for bail pending determination of the petition, came before Judge Goettel. Judge Goettel denied the bail application, stating that Schreiber was unlikely to succeed on the merits because McCray's holding that Swain [v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 75 (1965) ] is no longer good law was not intended to apply to white defendants. (Order dated April 22, 1985.) Concluding, however, that Schreiber's petition was not facially meritless, Judge Goettel ordered the State to respond. (Order dated April 23, 1985.) 41 The State opposed Schreiber's Sixth Amendment claim on the sole ground of inexcusable procedural default, citing Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977), and arguing that since Schreiber had failed to pursue this claim on appeal from his conviction, and since a state court had as a result barred the collateral pursuit of this claim, Schreiber could not pursue it collaterally in federal court absent a showing of cause for the default and prejudice from the alleged violation of his rights. In reply, Schreiber sought to show cause for having failed to pursue the Sixth Amendment argument on appeal from his conviction by arguing that prior to the 1983 district court decision in McCray, no reasonable Attorney could be faulted for not raising Jury Selection Exclusion on direct Appeal, as it was not the Law in New York State nor the Law in our Federal Courts. 42 Without holding an evidentiary hearing, Judge Goettel denied Schreiber's petition on its merits. In an opinion reported at 619 F.Supp. 1433 (1985), he noted that the state court had denied Schreiber's Sec. 440.10 motion without explanation, and therefore might be deemed to have excused the procedural default. See 619 F.Supp. at 1436. In any event, he decided to reach the merits because he accepted Schreiber's cause theory, stating that until the federal courts in this circuit changed the law (which occurred long after [Schreiber's] appeal had been denied), appealing the peremptory challenge issue appeared pointless, and that at the time of Schreiber's appeal his  'constitutional claim [was] so novel that its legal basis was not reasonably available to counsel.'  Id. at 1436 (quoting Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 16, 104 S.Ct. 2901, 2910, 82 L.Ed.2d 1 (1984) ). Judge Goettel also relied on the additional ... equitable argument that Roman had successfully attacked his conviction in federal court and it would thus be unfair not to reach the merits of Schreiber's petition. He did not discuss the prejudice component of the cause-and-prejudice test. 43 As to the merits, Judge Goettel adhered to the views he had expressed in denying Schreiber's bail application, and held that the Sixth Amendment theory of McCray was not applicable to the challenging of white jurors when there is a white defendant. Id. at 1439. He opined that McCray had not intended reciprocal treatment for white defendants, since the opinion is overwhelmingly concerned with the rights of minorities, and that Whites in most parts of the country are an overwhelming majority of the community, not a 'cognizable group.'  619 F.Supp. at 1439. Judge Goettel found innumerable practical difficulties created by McCray, and concluded that in the absence of a clear indication of McCray's intention to prohibit affirmative bias (i.e., the selection of black jurors who might be more accepting of the black witness with the criminal record), 619 F.Supp. 1440, he should deny Schreiber's petition. Judge Goettel also expressed the view that the ADA's explanations before Chief Judge Brieant of his reasons for his peremptory challenges were candid. Id. at 1439. 44 Accordingly, judgment was entered denying Schreiber's habeas petition. In light of Chief Judge Brieant's granting of Roman's petition, however, Judge Goettel issued a certificate of probable cause. We granted Schreiber's pro se motion to consolidate his appeal with that in Roman v. Abrams, and appointed counsel to represent him on appeal. Schreiber has served a period of imprisonment and has been released on parole. D. The Issues on Appeal 45 On appeal, the State urges that we reverse the granting of Roman's petition and affirm the denial of Schreiber's petition on several grounds. It argues, inter alia, that McCray's Sixth Amendment analysis has been effectively overruled or, in any event, should be given no retroactive application to these petitioners; that White persons do not constitute a cognizable group for Sixth Amendment purposes; that Chief Judge Brieant's finding of a racially discriminatory purpose in the prosecutor's use of peremptories was erroneous; and that, in light of the actual composition of the jury before which petitioners were tried, their convictions should not be set aside. 46 We reject all but the last of these contentions and, accordingly, conclude that neither petition should have been granted. In addition, we note that Schreiber's petition should have been dismissed on grounds of procedural default. 47