Opinion ID: 386882
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Barksdale's Appeals

Text: 8 Over the past seventeen years, Barksdale has resorted to every available appellate channel, alleging a variety of defects including jury discrimination. The Louisiana Supreme Court heard his first appeal, and, in a lengthy opinion, unanimously found no intentional or systematic exclusion of blacks from the jury system, noting that since Eubanks v. State of Louisiana, 356 U.S. 584, 78 S.Ct. 970, 2 L.Ed.2d 991 (1958), a case which reversed a murder conviction because of grand jury discrimination, the judges of the parish have adopted a practice of jury selection in keeping with the spirit of the law announced in the Eubanks case. State v. Barksdale, 247 La. 198, 170 So.2d 374, 380 (1964). Barksdale then presented his jury discrimination claims to the United States Supreme Court, which denied certiorari, 382 U.S. 921, 86 S.Ct. 297, 15 L.Ed.2d 236 (1965). Approximately two years later, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied Barksdale's habeas petition. State ex rel. Barksdale v. Dees, 252 La. 434, 211 So.2d 318 (1968). 7 9 In 1971, Barksdale filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. The petition was originally heard by a federal magistrate, and, based on the magistrate's recommendations, the district court set aside Barksdale's conviction. The state's appeal was dismissed. Barksdale v. Henderson, No. 73-1536, cert. denied, 419 U.S. 880, 95 S.Ct. 145, 42 L.Ed.2d 120 (1974). The state then moved to vacate the district court judgment on the ground that the hearing before the magistrate was an improper delegation of authority under Wingo v. Wedding, 418 U.S. 461, 94 S.Ct. 2842, 41 L.Ed.2d 879 (1974). The motion was granted and affirmed on appeal, Barksdale v. Henderson, 519 F.2d 382 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 422 U.S. 1045, 95 S.Ct. 2662, 45 L.Ed.2d 697 (1975). The case was remanded for an evidentiary hearing, and, after three such hearings, 8 the district court finally denied the petition. It found that at the time of petitioner's trial the jury commission and the judges were not engaged in invidious racial discrimination and purposeful exclusion of blacks as a class from jury service on the grand and petit juries. 10 Barksdale appealed the district court ruling, and a panel of this court, with one judge dissenting, reversed, holding that Barksdale presented an unrebutted prima facie case of racial discrimination. The panel compared the black percentage of the general population of Orleans Parish in 1962 and 1963 with the percentage of blacks appearing on the general jury venire for those years and reasoned that the disparities found proved the existence of both grand and petit jury discrimination because both (the) grand and petit juries were selected from the names which appeared on the general venire. 610 F.2d at 266. In addition, the panel noted that the sequence of blacks serving on grand juries from 1954 through 1963 in itself evidences discrimination through limited inclusion. 610 F.2d at 268. The panel held that the state's justifications for the disparities were either unsupported or illegal. The state's contention that different literacy levels for white and black jurors explained the lower level of black participation was held to be unsupported by the record. 610 F.2d at 272. The state's contention that the remainder of the disparity was explained in terms of the arguably benign system of excusing 'hardship' cases was held to be unacceptable in light of Labat v. Bennett, supra, 365 F.2d 698. Thus, with the state left without a legitimate non-discriminatory explanation to rebut Barksdale's prima facie case, 610 F.2d at 272, the panel set aside the conviction.