Opinion ID: 742598
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Statutory Challenge

Text: 31 The JSSA requires each federal judicial district to have a plan for random selection of jurors that reflects the policy that jurors are to be selected at random from a fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes, 28 U.S.C. § 1861, and that no person is to be excluded from service as a juror for any invidious reason, see id. § 1862. See id. § 1863(a). The plan must provide procedures designed to ensure that each county, parish, or similar political subdivision within the district or division is substantially proportionally represented in the master jury wheel. Id. § 1863(b)(3). The JSSA's aim is to assure all litigants that potential jurors will be selected at random from a representative cross section of the community and that all qualified citizens will have the opportunity to be considered for jury service. H.R.Rep. No. 90-1076 (1968) (House Report), reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1792, 1792. The Act provides that 32 [f]or the purposes of determining proportional representation in the master jury wheel, either the number of actual voters at the last general election in each county, parish, or similar political subdivision, or the number of registered voters if registration of voters is uniformly required throughout the district or division, may be used. 33 28 U.S.C. § 1863(b)(3). It also provides that the plan is 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 of this title. Id. § 1863(b)(2). The legislative history explains that the statute expresses a preference for the use of voter registration lists because [t]hese lists provide the widest community cross section of any list readily available, whereas [c]ensus data quickly become out of date and are not suitable. House Report, reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 1794. 34 Once the master wheel is established in this manner, random selection virtually eliminates the possibility of impermissible discrimination and arbitrariness at all stages of the jury selection process, and thereby tends to insure that the jury list will be drawn from a cross section of the community. Id., reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 1794. The statute requires only that each county's representation in the master jury wheel be substantially proportionate to the county's portion of the population of the district as a whole. See 28 U.S.C. § 1863(b)(3). By imposing these requirements for the composition of a master jury wheel, Congress did not [mean to] require that at any stage beyond the initial source list[,] the selection process shall produce groups that accurately mirror community makeup. House Report, reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 1794. 35 In order to prevail on a JSSA challenge, a defendant must show a substantial failure in proportional representation. See 28 U.S.C. § 1867(a). Mere technical violations of the procedures prescribed by the Act do not constitute substantial failure to comply with its provisions. United States v. LaChance, 788 F.2d 856, 870 (2d Cir.) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 883, 107 S.Ct. 271, 93 L.Ed.2d 248 (1986). To establish a violation based on group underrepresentation, a defendant must show not only that the representation of a distinctive group in the community is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community, but also that that underrepresentation is the result of systematic exclusion. See, e.g., United States v. Rioux, 97 F.3d 648, 654, 660 (2d Cir.1996). Although it remains unclear whether statistics alone can prove systematic exclusion, id. at 658, we have cautioned that [e]ven if they can, however, they would have to be of an overwhelmingly convincing nature, id. (citing Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 366, 99 S.Ct. 664, 669, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979) (disapproving plan in which women, 54% of the population, constituted less than 15% of the jury venires)). 36 Defendants in the present case challenged the Eastern District Plan as violating the JSSA on the principal grounds that since jurors for the Long Island division were summoned only from the Long Island counties, it was improper not to limit jurors for Brooklyn trials solely to residents of the New York City counties; and that, even if it were permissible to include Long Island residents in the master wheel for Brooklyn juries, the Plan produced a master wheel for trials in Brooklyn that did not contain a fair cross-section of the community because Long Island residents were overrepresented and minorities underrepresented. The district court properly rejected these contentions because defendants did not show either a systematic exclusion of minorities or a substantial failure to comply with the Act's requirements. 37 The Eastern District Plan called for a source list for each of the five counties, compiled from both voter registration lists and motor vehicle records. The District's jury administrator testified that the source lists were compiled every four years. The administrator culled a master jury wheel from those lists by starting at a random point on each list and selecting every one-hundredth name thereafter. This procedure resulted in a wheel whose contents correlated with the number of potential jurors on the source list for each county and thereby provided the appropriate balance of jurors of the several counties. The 1988 combined source list, in use at the time of trial, contained 6,438,689 names. From that source list, 378,511 names were selected for a master jury wheel. Twice a year, questionnaires were sent out to between 10,000 and 15,000 persons drawn at random from the master jury wheel. Of that group, approximately one-quarter were found to be qualified for jury duty and, without regard to ethnicity or county residence, were placed on the qualified jury panel. From that group, prospective jurors were summoned at random for service. 38 Defendants did not show that members of any ethnic group had been hindered in their attempts to register to vote or to obtain driver licenses, and did not show any other kind of systematic exclusion of ethnic minorities. Nor did defendants undertake an adequate statistical examination in an effort to demonstrate underrepresentation; they rely on the juror questionnaires for the panels during only a two-month period. Although the questionnaires for those months did request ethnic data, the question was labeled optional and more than a quarter of the jurors refused to answer it. Defendants attempted to remedy this shortcoming by inferring from each questionnaire the citizen's probable ethnic background based on address, religion, occupation, and other lifestyle data, including magazine subscriptions, and then comparing the resulting statistical profiles to the census data for residents of the district. The census, however, which counts, inter alios, resident aliens as well as citizens, and children as well as adults, does not accurately reflect the pool of qualified jurors. The district court properly declined to employ these speculative ethnic background figures in weighing the constitutionality of a jury selection plan, and it properly concluded that defendants did not make a sufficient showing of group underrepresentation. 39 Defendants also contend that they were hampered in making the necessary showing because they were improperly denied discovery. Though a defendant plainly has a right to discovery, see, e.g., Test v. United States, 420 U.S. 28, 30, 95 S.Ct. 749, 750, 42 L.Ed.2d 786 (1975) (per curiam), we see no improper curtailment of that right in the present case. The JSSA disclosure section provides, in pertinent part, that [t]he contents of records or papers used by the jury commission or clerk in connection with the jury selection process shall not be disclosed, except ... as may be necessary in the preparation or presentation of a motion challenging the district's jury selection procedures. 28 U.S.C. § 1867(f). To the extent necessary with respect to such a motion, a defendant may inspect, reproduce, and copy such records or papers. Id. These provisions, revolving around records and papers that are or were used by the administrators in the jury selection process, plainly give a defendant access only to records and papers already in existence. We see nothing that entitles defendants to require the jury administrator to analyze data on their behalf. Cf. United States v. Rioux, 97 F.3d at 658 (defendant's failure to show that undeliverable questionnaires went to blacks or Hispanics was decisive despite clerk's lack of analysis of such data because the defendant had unrestricted access to all the envelopes returned as undelivered and could have compiled his own list). 40 Here, the district court permitted defendants to take testimony of the jury administrator and to receive geographic breakdowns. The court denied, however, defendants' request to require the administrator to calculate the ethnic breakdown of jury panels in the Eastern District during a 14-month period, which would have required substantial work by the administrator's office. The administrator explained: 41 [a]s far as the ethnicity, that would require several hours of work because we do have to check an index for where each person, qualification questionnaire is located and then within a particular batch of the questionnaires we have to shuffle through, find a given individual's questionnaire. 42 (Transcript of Jury Selection at 428.) After hearing this testimony, the court concluded that defendants would be allowed to take testimony from the jury administrator and to examine the juror questionnaires themselves, but that it was inappropriate to require court personnel to research manually thousands of responses. (Id. at 434-35.) After further discussion, during which the district court considered permitting discovery beyond that required by the statute, the court adhered to its decision. The court's considered denial of defense requests for disclosures that were not required by the statute and that the court deemed infeasible or irrelevant was not an abuse of discretion.