Opinion ID: 2446955
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Supplemental jury panel

Text: By the third day of jury selection, the regular panels of both divisions of the circuit court were exhausted. The trial judge directed the circuit clerk to draw a supplemental panel, using variants: of two random numbers 17 and 82selected by the court for pulling the district-wide master jury list. The circuit clerk, in turn, gave the numbers to an employee, who ran them through a computer and generated one hundred fifty-five names. The trial judge then personally instructed the clerk to attempt to find telephone numbers for those listed and ordered him, in the judge's words, to start from the top of the list and work down in order to avoid a courthouse panel consisting of friends and acquaintances of courthouse personnel. Because voir dire was underway, there was no time to employ the usual method of notification by letter. Forty-one supplemental panel members received telephone notice and reported for duty the next morning. Of the twelve jurors who were finally seated, five were drawn from the supplemental panel. Cleveland maintains that the trial court erred in denying his motion to quash the supplemental panel. The appellant, who is black, argues that the telephone summons of supplemental panel members resulted in the unlawful exclusion of black prospective jurors. Out of the forty-one additional venirepersons who reported to the circuit court, only three were black. According to the 1990 census, 42.5 percent of Desha County residents are black. In Huckaby v. State, 262 Ark. 413, 557 S.W.2d 875 (1977), this court specifically approved the practice of reaching prospective jurors by telephone, despite the appellant's contention in that case that the method amounted to a systematic exclusion of the large class of eligible jurors without telephones. The trial judge, in overruling the motion to quash the panel, explained that We were in the process of selecting a jury in this case. We ran out. We had to take the most expedient method. One juror is as good as another. 262 Ark. at 416, 557 S.W.2d at 877. This court upheld the ruling. The scenario in the present case is similar the examination of venirepersons was underway, and completion of that phase of the proceedings had become a matter of some urgency. It cannot be overemphasized that the critical factor in Huckaby was the fact that voir dire was in progress at the time the telephone summons was authorized. We noted that Whatever might have been the proper procedure before the trial, it was certainly within the trial court's discretion to approve the most expeditious method of bringing in more jurors after the trial was already in progress. Id. The same rationale applies here. In another case, Kitchen v. State, 264 Ark. 579, 572 S.W.2d 839 (1978), we reversed a conviction where, on the morning of the day that trial was scheduled to begin, it was discovered that the prospective jurors had not been notified to appear, and the circuit judge instructed the sheriff to summon a portion of the panel by phone. We contrasted those circumstances with the situation in Huckaby v. State : There we held that it was permissible to summon additional jurors, during a recess, by telephone since it was within the trial court's discretion to approve the most expeditious method of bringing in more jurors after the trial was already in progress. Here the initial summoning of prospective jurors for the trial of this case was solely by telephone upon four hours' notice. We are of the view that our holding in Huckaby should not be extended to approve this procedure. 264 Ark. at 581, 572 S.W.2d at 841. In the present case, as in Huckaby and unlike Kitchen , additional venirepersons, not the initial panel members, were summoned by telephone. Personal notice by telephone is a statutorily sanctioned means by which prospective jurors may be summoned. Ark.Code Ann. § 16-32-106(b)(2) (Supp.1993). See King v. State, 312 Ark. 89, 93, 847 S.W.2d 37, 40 (1993), where this court approved the telephone summons of additional jurors, holding that There was no breach of statutory procedure under these circumstances. The selection of a petit jury from a representative cross-section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. Sanders v. State, 300 Ark. 25, 776 S.W.2d 334 (1989). There is, however, no requirement that the petit jury actually chosen must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population. Id. A defendant in a criminal trial is entitled to require that the state not deliberately or systematically deny to members of his race the right to participate, as jurors, in the administration of justice. Waters v. State, 271 Ark. 33, 607 S.W.2d 336 (1980). It is the state's purposeful or deliberate denial to blacks, on account of race, of participation in the administration of justice by selection for jury service that violates the equal protection clause. Id. As we pointed out recently in Walker v. State, 314 Ark. 628, 864 S.W.2d 230 (1993), the appellant bears the burden of proving the systematic exclusion of members of his racial group from the venire. In order to establish a prima facie violation of the fair-cross-section requirement, the appellant must show that (1) the group alleged to be excluded is a distinctive group in the community; (2) the representation of this group in venires from which the juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury selection process. Walker v. State, supra ; Sanders v. State, supra. Cleveland attempts to characterize the selection process in the present case as discretionary and thus discriminatory. Yet the numerical method utilized in drawing the supplemental panel was strictly random in operation. A showing that a particular jury panel is not representative of the racial composition of the population will not support a motion to quash the panel, for when the panel is drawn by chance, such a showing does not in itself make a prima facie case of racial discrimination. Thomas v. State, 289 Ark. 72, 709 S.W.2d 83 (1986). It must be emphasized that it is not enough simply to cite statisticsa policy or procedure entailing the systematic exclusion of a particular group must be shown in order to cross the threshold and shift the burden of proof to the State. Here, Cleveland failed to make a prima facie showing of racial discrimination in the jury selection process. Like the appellant in Walker v. State, supra , he was unable to offer any evidence of systematic exclusion. In the present case, the circuit court was dealing with an emergency situation in which voir dire was underway and seven jurors had been seated. It is clear from a reading of the transcript that the trial judge took pains to ensure fairness by giving specific instructions to the circuit clerk, who, in turn, passed the court's directions along to his staff. The circuit judge stated for the record that, when it became necessary to create a fresh pool of prospective jurors, he picked two random numbers between one and one hundred from a list he has used for the purpose during the past several years. He gave those numbers to the circuit clerk, Skippy Leek, and outlined the procedure to be followed: These two numbers were given to Mr. Leek, whom I understand gave them to Jerri Cingolani downstairs, who ran them through the computer, and it generated a hundred and fifty-five names on a list.... My instructions, after consulting with Mr. Leek and seeing what resources we had available, were for him to get as wide a distribution within the courthouse as he could of that list so as many people from the various communities and areas of the counties could have a chance to look at it and make notes and respond for people that they knew, because we have no telephone numbers. It is my understanding they took the telephone books from the county, Dumas, McGehee, and I guess the Arkansas City and whatever outlying areas, and they attempted to get phone numbers for as many of these people as they could in addition to identifying them from anyone in the courthouse who might know them. Now, I indicated my concern that they start at the top of the list and work down, that it was not a matter of picking out who you know or picking out your friends, that I did not want a, quote, courthouse panel coming in here, not in a derogatory sense... but not just acquaintances and friends of employees and officials of the courthouse. The trial court thus emphasized the importance of proceeding in alphabetical order rather than singling out persons known to the clerk's staff. Called as a witness by the appellant, the circuit clerk, Skippy Leek, testified that registered voters in the judicial district are listed alphabetically in the courthouse computer. The computer selected persons whose order on the alphabetical listing ended in the pair of double-digits randomly picked by the judge e.g., 17, 82, 117, 182and produced a list containing one hundred fifty-five names. Mr. Leek stated that, following the directions of the trial court, he instructed courthouse personnel to proceed with the list alphabetically. Deputy Sheriff Roy Fryar, who assisted in telephoning potential jurors, testified that the calls were made in alphabetical order. Personal acquaintance played a limited but expedient part in the clerk's instructions to his deputies. Ms. Irvin and June Robnolt, another deputy clerk who made telephone calls, were told to come up with numbers for as many people on the list as practicable. If, for instance, they knew an individual, they were to attempt to locate that person at work; if they knew a woman whose married name might be different than that shown on the list, they were to locate her by using her married name. One person listed, Warren Radar of Arkansas City, had no telephone but was known to staff members and personally contacted by a law enforcement officer. (The record does not indicate Mr. Radar's race.) Another person listed, Rose Daniels, a black woman who was eventually seated as a juror, was reached by telephone after a friend of hers, who happened to be in the circuit clerk's office on other business, supplied her number. The randomly derived supplemental list did not identify prospective jurors by race; that list, of course, was based on voter registration lists, which do not reveal the voters' race. See Thomas v. State, supra . Consequently, the trial court had no evidence before it regarding how many blacks may have been listed among the one hundred fifty-five additional names or how many may actually have been contacted. According to deputy clerk Sandra Irvin, We tried to contact every name that was on the supplemental list. I don't know how many names are on that list.... When we got through, I did not count. I do not know how many were contacted or how many showed up. The record merely reflects that three black venirepersons reported to duty after having been notified by telephone, two of whom were impaneled for trial. However, nothing in the evidence presented by the appellant suggests that these figures resulted from the systematic exclusion of blacks from the jury selection process, which was random, not selective, in its inception and execution. In short, the appellant has failed to establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination. Hence, the trial court did not err in refusing to quash the supplemental panel.