Opinion ID: 343369
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Defendants' Alternative Claims.

Text: 40 Defendants contend, however, that the 10-16% absolute disparity standard approved in Swain cannot be dispositive of the present cases since blacks and Chicanos comprise less than 10% of the voting-age population in Colorado. Moreover, even if Swain is controlling on the constitutional challenge, defendants assert the Act created a different and higher statutory standard, imposing an affirmative duty on the district court to supplement the voter registration lists whenever a substantial failure to comply with its fair cross section requirement is demonstrated, irrespective of the cause of the misrepresentation. 41 Defendants' observations that the black and Chicano communities in Colorado are considerably smaller than the black community considered in Swain and that Swain was decided prior to passage of the Act are valid distinctions. However, in light of the determinations of the majority of federal courts that the statutory and constitutional standards are functional equivalents and the fact that Swain remains the only pronouncement of the Supreme Court regarding the degree of underrepresentation necessary to support a prima facie case of systematic exclusion in the absence of obvious opportunities for discrimination, Swain must be afforded highly persuasive, if not controlling, significance. It is not necessary for us to base our decision solely on these grounds, however, since even if the hypothesis of a stricter statutory standard is accepted defendants still failed to meet their burden of proof. 42 Defendants have cited us to decisions in two circuits which appear to have adopted a bifurcated standard for constitutional and statutory jury selection challenges. United States v. Jenkins, 2 Cir., 496 F.2d 57, 64-66, cert. denied, 420 U.S. 925, 95 S.Ct. 1119, 43 L.Ed.2d 394; United States v. Fernandez, 2 Cir., 480 F.2d 726, 733; United States v. McDaniels, E.D.La., 370 F.Supp. 298, 301-02, aff'd sub nom., United States v. Goff, 5 Cir., 509 F.2d 825, cert. denied, 423 U.S. 857, 96 S.Ct. 109, 46 L.Ed.2d 83. Although the jury selection challenges considered in these cases proved unsuccessful, the district court accepted arguendo the absolute impact standard 11 for statutory challenges developed in Jenkins and Goff, applied it to the evidence presented below, and concluded that the maximum underrepresentation of either Chicanos or Blacks on the jury wheels in this district falls approximately halfway between the minimum underrepresentation found in Jenkins and the maximum underrepresentation permitted in Goff. Test, supra, at 697; Bishop, supra, at 3. The district court also compared the absolute percentage disparities and the comparative percentage disparities 12 demonstrated in the present cases with those found in Jenkins and Goff. These comparisons were summarized in the following table, to which we have added statistics computed from Swain for purposes of comparison with a strictly constitutional standard. 43 Id. Although defendants have questioned some of the district court's calculations, even if we were to accept defendants' figures the disparities demonstrated in the present cases would still be within the limits set by Jenkins and Goff and well below the range of disparity approved in Swain. 44 Defendants nevertheless complain these comparisons are a classic example of the visceras of the Second and Fifth Circuits leading the viscera of the District of Colorado. Defendants have been unable to cite us to any precedent in support of their position, however, and overlook the fact that their suggested standardized approaches merely present alternative methods of measuring departures from a statistically ideal cross section of the community. 13 Irrespective of the analytical approach selected, the process of characterizing the substantiality of the data derived therefrom necessarily remains a subjective function. Congress could have performed this function itself and prescribed uniform statistical methods for measuring departures from an ideal rather than a fair cross section of the community. Congress could also have set objective figures measured in terms of percentages or standard statistical deviations for determining when these departures were statistically significant rather than merely legally substantial. It did not choose to do so. Instead, Congress delegated this function to the courts to be performed on a case by case basis. What defendants in effect urge is that we reject the collective experience of the courts in performing this function and instead allow ourselves to be led by defendants' visceral reactions to the substantiality of the disparities demonstrated below. This we cannot do. 45 Defendants also overlook the fact that in the day-to-day operation of the jury system, the criminal defendant is not indicted or convicted by the community at large, but rather by relatively small groups of 12 or 23 persons selected to represent the community on petit and grand juries. In assessing whether a given defendant's constitutional or statutory rights have been violated through the operation of a jury selection process, the proper focus of inquiry must therefore be the impact of the challenged process on the grand and petit juries. This assessment must be made in light of the well-settled rule that a defendant has no right to a grand or petit jury of any given demographic composition, but only to jury panels selected from a source reasonably representative of the community. E. g., Taylor v. Louisiana,supra, 419 U.S. at 538, 95 S.Ct. 692; Alexander v. Louisiana, supra, 405 U.S. at 628, 92 S.Ct. 1221. It must likewise be remembered that our jury system of necessity deals with living individuals rather than fractional percentage persons. Changes in the demographic composition of juries and jury panels can therefore only be made by the addition or deletion of one or more individuals. Both Congress and the courts have been mindful of this latter fact in concluding that only gross or marked disparities or substantial departures from a fair cross section of the community require judicial intervention. 46 We cannot say in the present cases that disparities of less than one person in the demographic composition of petit and grand juries are  substantial or that a difference of two persons on a jury panel of fifty persons is a gross or marked disparity. 14 The judgment of the district court with respect to the alleged underrepresentation of blacks and Chicanos is therefore affirmed. 47