Opinion ID: 475767
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Direct Prima Facie Case and Burden of Proof

Text: 19 Duren was a case in which the defendant attempted to demonstrate statistical underrepresentation of women from grand jury venires on the basis of their potential to claim automatic exemptions. It did not rest on direct allegations of intentional exclusion of women from grand juries. Rather, Duren supplied standards to determine when statistics can raise a prima facie inference of intentional exclusion of an identifiable group. [I]n order to establish a prima facie case, it was necessary for petitioner to show that the underrepresentation of women, generally and on his venire, was due to their systematic exclusion in the jury-selection process. 99 S.Ct. at 669 (emphasis added). 20 Duren thus provides guidance to efforts to reason backwards from suspicious statistics of underrepresentation to an impermissible cause of the underrepresentation, purposeful exclusion. It is such exclusion, or intentional discrimination, that is the harm. 2 Inferential assistance from statistical analysis is not necessary where the harm of exclusion can be shown directly, as it has been here. 21 Where there is direct evidence of intentional discrimination, the proper starting point is Thiel, not Duren. In Thiel, the Court based its findings of impermissible, purposeful exclusion on direct testimonial evidence of a clerk of the court and of a jury commissioner. The clerk and commissioner refused to place names of day-laborers in jury venire lists because those individuals allegedly would request and receive excuses for financial hardship. Without requiring any showing that day-laborers would have been members of Thiel's venire absent purposeful exclusion, the Supreme Court found an unconstitutional exclusion of an identifiable group. 22 Wage earners, including those who are paid by the day, constitute a very substantial portion of the community, a portion that cannot be intentionally and systematically excluded in whole or in part without doing violence to the democratic nature of the jury system. Were we to sanction an exclusion of this nature we would encourage whatever desires those responsible for the selection of jury panels may have to discriminate against persons of low economic and social status.... It follows that we cannot sanction the method by which the jury panel was formed in this case.... On that basis it becomes unnecessary to determine whether the petitioner was in any way prejudiced by the wrongful exclusion or whether he was one of the excluded class.... It is likewise immaterial that the jury which actually decided the factual issue in the case was found to contain at least five members of the laboring class. The evil lies in the admitted wholesale exclusion of a large class of wage earners in disregard of the high standards of jury selection. 23 Thiel, 66 S.Ct. at 987-88 (footnote and citations omitted) (emphasis added). 24 Thiel thus elucidates the foundational tenet of American jurisprudence that any party to a lawsuit who is entitled to a jury shall have her jury selected according to a process that is free from the taint of purposeful discrimination. This tenet becomes bedrock when the party is a defendant to a charge of murder and the identifiable group and the discrimination alleged are racial. See, e.g., Strauder v. West Virginia, 10 Otto 303, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1880). The majority in today's case would have us dissolve the bedrock and dilute those high standards by forming a constitutionally opaque solution and requiring a needless search for unconstitutional precipitate. 25 In particular, the majority would require defendant Atwell to establish prejudice, by providing some evidence that unserved potential jurors in the Desire project were actually excluded from his venire. Ante at 506-507. This could be directly established by proof of nonservice on those venire members chosen from the wheel for Atwell's indictment, or indirectly by statistical evidence raising the inference that an unserved Desire resident would have been included in Atwell's venire. Like Diogenes' search through Athens for an honest man, such additional requirements are burdensome and unnecessary in light of Thiel 's specific injunction against a harm inquiry. 3 They also are fundamentally unfair in plain view of Atwell's right to a grand jury selection process free from taint. 4 26 The serious nature of the discrimination demonstrated by Atwell does not permit the State to speculate that no harm could have resulted. 5 It requires the Government to demonstrate that no harm actually resulted as a logical certainty. As the Cage court determined, this requires a showing that all of the individuals chosen for Atwell's venire were served, and that the jury selection process was therefore free from taint. 27