Opinion ID: 518440
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Fair and Reasonable Representation of Community

Text: 15 The second prong of the Duren test presents greater difficulties. Under this second prong, defendant must prove that the representation of blacks on the jury list is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of blacks in the community. This element of the Duren test hinges upon the disputed geographic scope of the community from which the state must draw the venire under the sixth and fourteenth amendments. If the Constitution permits this court to define community as a lesser area than Cook County, the court must examine the issue of fairness and reasonableness with that smaller community in mind. From our analysis of the history of the sixth amendment and court precedent, we find that the district court did not err in evaluating the fairness and reasonableness of Davis's venire in relation to the racial makeup of Cook County.
16 The district court found that the early Congress intended the venire to be drawn from an area larger than what we generally consider to be a community. 3 According to the district court, Congress rejected James Madison's attempt to incorporate the term vicinage in the sixth amendment and instead adopted the term district to define the area from which the jury was to be drawn. The district court stated, The Sixth Amendment was never intended to provide a defendant with a trial in his backyard, nor with a jury comprised of the families or neighbors of his victim. 17 The right to a jury trial in the state or district arose from the concept of vicinage but that concept came to mean different things depending on the time, place, and people affected. The term vicinage, in early times, literally meant neighborhood or county. See Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 93 n. 35, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 1902 n. 35, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970); Connor, The Constitutional Right to a Trial by a Jury of the Vicinage, 57 U.Pa.L.Rev. 197, 198-99 (1909). In England, the phrase a jury drawn from the vicinage meant that jurors were drawn from the immediate locality. Jurors, at that time, were expected to use their independent knowledge of the facts to decide the case. The American colonists, on the other hand, argued that the concept of vicinage prohibited England from shipping colonists accused of treason across the ocean for trial. Blume, The Place of Trial of Criminal Cases: Constitutional Vicinage and Venue, 43 Mich.L.Rev. 59, 64 (1944). Vicinage, for the colonists, did not invoke the right to a jury in the immediate locality but the right to trial on the continent of North America. See Blume, supra at 65-66; Connor, supra at 198-99. History suggests that vicinage was an elastic concept describing a large or small area, depending on the underlying policy evoked. 18 The ambiguous concept of vicinage apparently also troubled the early Congress. When Congress wrote the Bill of Rights, the members debated whether to include the term vicinage in the sixth amendment. See Williams, 399 U.S. at 94, 94 n. 37, 95, 90 S.Ct. at 1902, 1903 n. 37, 1903. According to James Madison, some worried that the term was too vague if defined by law, while others argued that the concept was too narrow if interpreted as trial in the county. See id. at 95-96, 90 S.Ct. at 1903-04. Ultimately, they compromised. See id. at 96, 90 S.Ct. at 1903. Congress adopted the sixth amendment with the added phrase the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law.... U.S. Const., amend. VI (emphasis added). 19 Although the district court found that the jury must be drawn from an area larger than a community to satisfy the term district or state, we are not as certain that the early congressional debates and history of the term vicinage lead necessarily to this inference. 4 We believe that the district and state language of the sixth amendment places some parameters on a legislature's power to draw the jurors but does not per se prevent a legislature from delineating a smaller area from which to draw a jury. As history suggests, vicinage is an elastic concept affected by underlying policies and, as such, should be in the majority of cases left to a legislative body. As James Madison said, [Vicinage] must be therefore left to the discretion of the legislature to modify it according to circumstances. See Williams, 399 U.S. at 94 n. 35, 90 S.Ct. at 1902 n. 35 (citing 2 M. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention 332 (1911)); see also Blume, supra at 93 (The jury guaranteed to the people of the various territories was not a jury of the 'county' but a jury to be selected from such places as the legislative authority might provide.) 20
21 Respondent takes a different tack. He argues that petitioner has no constitutional right to a jury drawn from the entire area of Cook County. Seventh Circuit precedent, he asserts, permits a jury selection system that excludes prospective jurors not living within a reasonable distance from the courthouse. See United States v. Clancy, 276 F.2d 617, 631-32 (7th Cir.1960), rev'd on other grounds, 365 U.S. 312, 81 S.Ct. 645, 5 L.Ed.2d 574 (1961). Furthermore, he states that this court need not constitutionally define Cook County as the community simply because an Illinois statute summons jurors on a county-wide basis. 22 At first glance, respondent's position appears to correspond with cases applying the sixth amendment to the federal jury selection system. According to the Supreme Court, the sixth amendment entitles a defendant to a jury drawn from the federal district in which the crime was committed, although the jury may be drawn from a division of the district rather than the entire district. Compare Ruthenberg v. United States, 245 U.S. 480, 482, 38 S.Ct. 168, 169, 62 L.Ed. 414 (1918) and Salinger v. Loisel, 265 U.S. 224, 232, 235, 44 S.Ct. 519, 522, 523, 68 L.Ed. 989 (1924) with Barrett v. United States, 169 U.S. 218, 228-30, 18 S.Ct. 327, 331-32, 42 L.Ed. 723 (1897). Lower courts have held therefore that a jury selection system satisfies the sixth amendment if the jury is selected from either the entire district or a division of that district. See United States v. Young, 618 F.2d 1281, 1287-88 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 844, 101 S.Ct. 126, 66 L.Ed.2d 52 (1980); United States v. Florence, 456 F.2d 46, 49 (4th Cir.1972); Katz v. United States, 321 F.2d 7, 9 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 375 U.S. 903, 84 S.Ct. 193, 11 L.Ed.2d 144 (1963). Two circuits have even gone so far as to hold that, when a district is divided into divisions, a defendant may be tried in a division different than the division where the crime was committed. See United States v. Mase, 556 F.2d 671, 675 (2d Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 916, 98 S.Ct. 1472, 55 L.Ed.2d 508 (1978); United States v. James, 528 F.2d 999, 1021 (5th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 959, 97 S.Ct. 382, 383, 50 L.Ed.2d 326 (1976). 5 23 The majority of jury selection systems in this litany of cases, however, complied with laws or court-imposed rules designating the area from which to draw the jury list. 6 A lawmaking body or court ascertained the area comparable to the community (the area from which the jury list must be drawn). In the case before this court, the area designated by the legislature and court does not coincide with the area that respondent would have us designate as the community. 7 24 To a large extent defining the community for purposes of the sixth amendment is an arbitrary decision. See Taylor, 419 U.S. at 537, 95 S.Ct. at 701 ([C]ommunities differ at different times and places. What is a fair cross section at one time or place is not necessarily a fair cross section at another time or a different place.) County lines or federal district lines do not magically determine the parameters of a community. We believe, however, that because the decision is somewhat arbitrary, it is a decision that should be left when possible to a body authorized to legislate on such matters. A well-intentioned jury supervisor, or this court for that matter, should not redefine the area from which the legislature has ordered the jury list to be drawn without a lawful justification. It is precisely because an Illinois law has stipulated the areas from which juries are to be drawn that defendant is entitled to a venire fairly and reasonably representative of that area. 8 25 Few cases discuss the scope of the community for purposes of sixth amendment analysis but the few decisions that expressly address the issue permit the legislature to define the community as an area larger than a suburb or neighborhood. See Bradley v. Judges of Superior Court for Los Angeles County, 531 F.2d 413, 417 (9th Cir.1976); Alvarado v. State, 486 P.2d 891, 901 (Alaska 1971); cf. Jeffers v. United States, 451 F.Supp. 1338, 1346 (N.D.Ind.1978) (community as used in Jury Selection and Service Act refers to entire division or district, not merely a city). 26 While some courts permit the jury to be drawn from a more limited area than the county or division, no court has faced a situation in which prospective jurors, once gathered through a process of random selection, divided themselves into smaller units according to convenience. 9 Court employees or prospective jurors can not redefine community, once it has been implicitly defined by the legislature or state court, without violating the principle behind the fair-cross-section criterion. The language of the sixth amendment itself supports this conclusion. The sixth amendment states a defendant ... is entitled to a trial ... by an impartial jury of the state and district ..., which district shall have been previously ascertained by law. This language suggests that a legislature or court should determine the geographic scope of the community prior to a court challenge to the jury selection system. See, e.g., Bradley v. Judges of Superior Court, 372 F.Supp. 26, 31 (C.D.Cal.1974), aff'd in part and dismissed in part, 531 F.2d 413 (9th Cir.1976) (county-wide jury selection system valid because California statutes provide for trials by county). 27 This principle is evident from the courts' prior approach to the fair-cross-section criterion. The Supreme Court, this court, and other federal courts have treated the community in jury selection challenges as coextensive with the geographic area from which the court or legislature ordered the venire drawn. See, e.g., Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979); Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1974); Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972); Carter v. Jury Commission, 396 U.S. 320, 322, 90 S.Ct. 518, 519, 24 L.Ed.2d 549 (1969); Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942); Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940); Ruthenberg v. United States, 245 U.S. at 482, 38 S.Ct. at 169; Gibson v. Zant, 705 F.2d 1543 (11th Cir.1983); United States v. Brady, 579 F.2d 1121, 1133 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1074, 99 S.Ct. 849, 59 L.Ed.2d 41 (1978); Bradley, 531 F.2d at 415; United States v. Buchanan, 29 F.2d 1148, 1151 (7th Cir.1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 950, 96 S.Ct. 1725, 48 L.Ed.2d 194 (1976); United States v. Titus, 210 F.2d 210, 212-13 (2d Cir.1954); Yoho v. United States, 202 F.2d 241, 242 (9th Cir.1953); Jeffers v. United States, 451 F.Supp. 1338, 1346 (N.D.Ind.1978); United States v. Brown, 281 F.Supp. 31, 33 (E.D.La.1968); People v. Flores, 62 Cal.App.3d Supp. 19, 24-26, 133 Cal.Rptr. 759 (1976); Adams v. Superior Court, 27 Cal.App.3d 719, 723, 728, 104 Cal.Rptr. 144 (1972). 10 28 We do not believe that the convenience questions asked by the jury supervisor were part of a court- or legislatively-sanctioned system. Nothing in the record suggests that the Illinois legislature or courts authorized the jury supervisor to delineate the community through the convenience questions. The Illinois statute and Cook County circuit rules describing the jury selection procedure do not grant authority to the jury supervisor to further narrow the geographic scope from which the jury list is drawn. 11 The statute and circuit court rules specifically designate the court and jury commissioners as the parties responsible for the jury selection process. See People ex rel. Lasecki v. Traeger, 374 Ill. 355, 359-60, 29 N.E.2d 519 (1940) (upholding delegation of jury selection authority to commissioners and judges); People v. Johnson, 154 Ill.App.3d 301, 107 Ill.Dec. 515, 507 N.E.2d 179 (1987) (delegation of jury selection authority to county judges and jury commissioners is constitutionally valid); People v. Reed, 108 Ill.App.3d 984, 64 Ill.Dec. 469, 439 N.E.2d 1277 (1982) (court strictly construes power of county employee to process computer program for juror selection outside presence of jury commissioners). In fact, the circuit court rules give explicit instructions as to the areas from which the venires are to be drawn, and the Illinois courts have voiced approval for the county-wide jury selection option. See People v. Fort, 133 Ill.App.2d 473, 273 N.E.2d 439, 446 (1971) (the County of Cook is a reasonable geographic area from which to draw jurors); People v. Free, 112 Ill.2d 154, 97 Ill.Dec. 396, 492 N.E.2d 1269, cert. denied, 479 U.S. 871, 107 S.Ct. 246, 93 L.Ed.2d 170 (1986) (court implicitly defines Du Page county as community for sixth amendment analysis). 29 Respondent cites Zicarelli v. Gray, 543 F.2d 466 (3d Cir.1976), to support the proposition that Cook County is not the proper community for sixth amendment analysis. In Zicarelli, an assignment judge, appointed by the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and in accordance with New Jersey statute, designated the venue of a trial of a defendant indicted by grand jury. See id. at 468. By changing venue, the assignment judge moved the defendant's trial from the county in which his crimes occurred to a second county and to a jury drawn exclusively from the second county. The Zicarelli court found that the Sixth Amendment prohibits courts only from obtaining petit jurors from beyond the boundaries of two large units, the state and the federal judicial district. Id. at 481. 30 We do not believe that our holding here and the position of the Third Circuit in Zicarelli are inconsistent. In Zicarelli a judge, acting under the authority and review of the court, balanced concern for the safety of witnesses and concern for court efficiency with the right to trial in the county where the crime was committed. In his claim before this court, Davis does not question the court's power to intervene in the jury system if overriding concerns exist but challenges a jury supervisor's authority to redefine the community for purposes of sixth amendment analysis without the authority of the court or legislature. Unlike the decisions of the judge in Zicarelli, the jury supervisor was not acting with the court's authority. Furthermore, the Third Circuit's decision in Zicarelli v. Gray preceded the Supreme Court's decision in Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979). We do not find Zicarelli dispositive on the issue of community. 31 Similarly, we find unpersuasive respondent's reliance on this court's decision in United States v. Clancy, 276 F.2d 617 (7th Cir.1960), rev'd on other grounds, 365 U.S. 312, 81 S.Ct. 645, 5 L.Ed.2d 574 (1961). Respondent cites Clancy for the proposition that this court has found nothing wrong with a method of selecting juries that excluded prospective jurors not living within a reasonable distance from the courthouse. In Clancy, a defendant challenged a jury selection process in which the jury commissioner and his clerk sorted the names of potential jurors according to the distance they lived from the place at which the grand and petit juries were to sit. The commissioner's actions were governed by 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1864 (1948) (amended 1968) which at that time ordered, the names of grand and petit jurors shall be publicly drawn from a box containing the names of not less than three hundred qualified persons. 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1864 (1948) (amended 1968). 32 We find this case distinguishable for a number of reasons. In Clancy this court decided that defendant failed to file a motion to dismiss the grand jury indictment and a challenge to the array within the proper period of time. See id. at 631-32; see also Scales v. United States, 260 F.2d 21, 45-46 (4th Cir.1958) aff'd, 367 U.S. 203, 81 S.Ct. 1469, 6 L.Ed.2d 782 (1961). The subsequent discussion of the jury selection process used is dicta. Furthermore, the jury commissioner in Clancy acted pursuant to a statute that outlined jury selection in very little detail; here the Illinois statute was explicit as to the area from which to obtain the jury list. Compare Ill.Rev.Stat., ch. 78, p 32.2, Sec. 9.2 (effective 1981) and Circuit Rules of Cook County 0.4(c) with 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1864 (1948) (amended 1968). More importantly, the Clancy court did not address the sixth amendment issue but merely concluded that 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1864 did not prohibit this method of jury selection. See Clancy, 276 F.2d at 632. As in Zicarelli, this case predated the Supreme Court's decision in Duren v. Missouri and therefore preceded much of the Supreme Court's development of sixth amendment analysis. We find the case of little precedential value. 33 We agree with the respondent that, when defining the community from which the jury must be drawn, the court or legislature may consider convenience to the jurors. See People v. Johnson, 154 Ill.App.3d 301, 107 Ill.Dec. 515, 507 N.E.2d 179 (1987) (Dividing a county into parts and drawing jury venires from one part of the county for cases at one court facility and from another part for cases at another facility does not per se ... deny defendants an impartial trial.) The legislature or court, however, must make that decision prior to a court challenge such as this one. To redefine the scope of the community after the legislature has implicitly laid out the scope of the community undermines the fair-cross-section criterion of the sixth amendment. 12 34 We do not decide today the constitutionality of a court or legislature's actions in the creation of a jury selection system. Prior decisions indicate that those bodies must create the jury selection system with an eye to the policies of fairness and inclusiveness. See, e.g., Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975); United States v. Test, 550 F.2d 577, 594 (10th Cir.1976); Alvarado v. State, 486 P.2d 891 (Alaska 1971). Likewise those bodies are entitled to take into consideration the convenience of jurors when delineating the jury pool. See United States v. Brown, 281 F.Supp. at 33. We need not decide the constitutionality of the jury system as it was created in Cook County for that is not in dispute here. The defendant questions the constitutionality of the jury supervisor's application of the principles set down for him by the Cook County circuit court and the Illinois legislature. Cf. United States v. Gometz, 730 F.2d 475, 480 (7th Cir.1984),cert. denied, 469 U.S. 845, 105 S.Ct. 155, 83 L.Ed.2d 92 (1984) (defendant challenges clerk's application of the federal jury selection act).
35 The history of jury selection challenges suggests that it is often in the application of jury selection laws that the gravest violations to the right to a fair and impartial jury occur. See, e.g., Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 497, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 1281-82, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1976); Turner v. Fouche, 396 U.S. 346, 360, 90 S.Ct. 532, 540, 24 L.Ed.2d 567 (1970); Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 55 S.Ct. 579, 79 L.Ed. 1074 (1935); United States v. Gometz, 730 F.2d 475, 479 (7th Cir.1984). Processes which permit human subjectivity to influence an objective, random system often foster biased results. Regardless of the good intentions of the persons in charge of jury selection, their interplay with the system necessarily skews the system established by a court or legislative body. Those intentions have not always been as honorable as the jury supervisor's were in this case. To permit Cook County jurors to define the community in which they serve based on convenience undermines the objectivity of the jury selection system. 36 Likewise a narrow definition of community could undermine the policy of inclusiveness underlying the sixth amendment. Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 130, 61 S.Ct. 164, 165, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940); Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 85, 62 S.Ct. 457, 471, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942). The Supreme Court established the fair-cross-section-of-the-community criterion, not to exclude minorities, but to increase their participation in the system. The Supreme Court states: 37 [T]he purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power--to make available the commonsense judgment of the community as a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps overconditioned or biased response of a judge.... This prophylactic vehicle is not provided if the jury pool is made up of only special segments of the populace or if large, distinctive groups are excluded from the pool. Community participation in the administration of the criminal law, moreover, is not only consistent with our democratic heritage but is also critical to public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system. 38 Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. at 530, 95 S.Ct. at 698 (citations omitted); Teague v. Lane, 820 F.2d 832, 838 (7th Cir.1987). When prospective jurors choose to serve near their homes they do not consider the broader policy of inclusiveness critical to the sixth amendment. A legislature or court, however, analyzing the jury selection system with objective debate and reflection, may establish a community that includes a cross section of diverse groups of people living within a reasonable distance from one another. 13
39 In reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we apply the same standard as the district court. Richardson v. Penfold, 839 F.2d 392, 394 (7th Cir.1988). We must draw all reasonable inferences regarding undisputed facts in the light most favorable to the nonmovant. Conner v. Reinhard, 847 F.2d 384, 396 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 147, 102 L.Ed.2d 118 (1988). Summary judgment is proper only when the moving party has established that there is no genuine issue of material fact and he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Roman v. United States Postal Service, 821 F.2d 382, 385 (7th Cir.1987). 40 Defendant submitted 1980 census figures indicating that blacks constituted 25.6% of the population of Cook County. The record indicates that none of the forty persons eligible for defendant's jury were black. This court must consider whether a venire containing no black members was fair and reasonable in relation to a community where over one quarter of the population is black. 41 The validity of defendant's claim rests on the validity of his statistics. The census figures arguably are overinclusive because they include children and other persons ineligible for jury service. The majority of jury discrimination cases that we found compare the adult voting population with the jury lists drawn. See, e.g., Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. at 361-62, 99 S.Ct. at 667; Whitus v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 545, 552, 87 S.Ct. 643, 647, 17 L.Ed.2d 599 (1967); Porter v. Freeman, 577 F.2d 329, 330 (5th Cir.1978); Savage v. United States, 547 F.2d 212, 215 n. 5 (3d Cir.1976), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 958, 97 S.Ct. 1608, 51 L.Ed.2d 810 (1977); Murrah v. Arkansas, 532 F.2d 105, 107 (8th Cir.1976); United States v. Test, 550 F.2d 577 (10th Cir.1976); United States v. DiTommaso, 405 F.2d 385, 388 (4th Cir.1968), cert. denied, 394 U.S. 934, 89 S.Ct. 1209, 22 L.Ed.2d 465 (1969); United States v. Armsbury, 408 F.Supp. 1130 (D.Or.1976). The overinclusiveness of defendant's statistic calls into question the weight a court should give to this evidence of unfair and unreasonable representation on the venire. 42 This is not to say, however, that defendant has failed to prove that blacks were underrepresented on the venire. The Supreme Court, using raw census statistics that included the underaged and unqualified, held that a 23% disparity in the general population and the number of blacks on a grand jury showed unconstitutional discrimination against blacks. See Turner v. Fouche, 396 U.S. 346, 349, 90 S.Ct. 532, 534, 24 L.Ed.2d 567 (1970); see also Davis v. Zant, 721 F.2d 1478, 1481 nn. 2, 3 & 4 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1143, 105 S.Ct. 2689, 86 L.Ed.2d 706, 707 (1983); Gibson v. Zant, 705 F.2d 1543, 1545 nn. 2 & 3 (11th Cir.1983); People v. Jones, 9 Cal.3d 546, 510 P.2d 705, 707, 108 Cal.Rptr. 345, 347 (1973). We recognize also that defendant's claim would be foreclosed if we mandated that he provide statistical evidence based solely on voter registration lists because those lists no longer indicate racial distinctions. The Supreme Court in Turner and other courts have recognized that defendant should not be expected to carry a prohibitive burden in proving underrepresentation. See 532 F.2d at 108; United States v. Butera, 420 F.2d 564, 569 n. 13 (1st Cir.1970). Raw census figures showing a disparity as large as 25% may establish that blacks were underrepresented on the jury list.