Opinion ID: 2982291
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: grand jury composition

Text: Maddox first seeks to have his conviction set aside and the indictment overturned on the basis that the composition of the grand jury violated his right to equal protection. Specifically, he argues that African-Americans were systematically excluded from the grand jury that indicted him, as well as from service as grand jury foreperson. The district court denied Maddox’s motion to dismiss on these grounds. The courts have long “recognized that a criminal defendant’s right to equal protection of the laws has been denied when he is indicted by a grand jury from which members of a racial group purposefully have been excluded.” Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U.S. 545, 556 (1979). “[I]n order to show that an equal protection violation has occurred in the context of grand jury selection, the defendant must show that the procedure employed resulted in substantial underrepresentation of his race or of the identifiable group to which he belongs.” Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 494 (1977). This requires meeting a three-part test laid out in Castaneda. United States v. Ovalle, 136 F.3d 1092, 1104 (6th Cir. 1998) (applying Castaneda’s equal protection analysis to a defendant’s claim under the Fifth Amendment). First, the defendant must “establish that the group is one that is a recognizable, distinct class, singled out for different treatment under the laws, as written or as applied.” Castaneda, 430 U.S. at 494. Second, “the degree of underrepresentation must be proved, by comparing the proportion of the group in the total population to the proportion called to serve as grand jurors, over a significant period of time.” Id. Third, the defendant must establish that the selection procedure was susceptible to abuse or was not racially neutral. Id. “Once the defendant has shown substantial underrepresentation of his group, he has made out a prima facie case of discriminatory purpose, and the burden then shifts to the [government] -6- Case Nos. 11-5829/5837/5860/6191/6192/6196/6198, United States v. Miller, et al. to rebut that case.” Id. at 495. If a prima facie case of discrimination has been made and not rebutted, the defendant’s conviction must be set aside and the indictment quashed. Rose, 443 U.S. at 551. Here, the parties do not dispute that Maddox, an African-American, has established the first Castaneda element. Rather, they dispute the second and third elements, which the district court—based on the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation—found Maddox had failed to establish. We review Maddox’s challenge de novo. Ovalle, 136 F.3d at 1100.
As to the degree of underrepresentation of African-Americans and minorities, the record contains an affidavit by the chief deputy clerk of the Eastern District of Tennessee, as ordered by the court, that explains the jury selection process and includes reports detailing the demographic make-up of the jury pool in the district’s Northeastern Division in 2005 and 2009. According to these reports—filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1863(a)—in 2005, African-Americans comprised 1.86 percent of the qualified jurors in the master jury wheel filled and 2.2 percent of the general population of voting age in the division.1 All ethnic minorities comprised 3.5 percent of the wheel and the same percentage in the general population.2 In 2009, the next time the wheel was filled, African-Americans comprised 1.31 percent of qualified jurors. All minorities made up 3.27 percent of the pool. 1 In his briefs, Maddox bases his argument on an assumption that Africans-Americans comprise 2.9 percent of the general population. Yet, as the government notes, this figure comes from aggregate Census data that include residents ineligible for juror duty, such as children younger than eighteen years of age. According to the deputy clerk’s affidavit, the 2.2 percent figure comes from population tables of U.S. citizens of eighteen years or more that are provided by the Census Bureau and are based on the 2000 Census. 2 As the magistrate judge noted, the grand jury that indicted Maddox was impaneled in 2008 and drawn from the master jury wheel filled in 2005. -7- Case Nos. 11-5829/5837/5860/6191/6192/6196/6198, United States v. Miller, et al. There are two ways to compare these numbers—either way, Maddox’s argument is frivolous. The easiest way is to look at the simple difference between the percentage of AfricanAmericans in the jury wheel and in the general population. This difference was less than one percent in both years. The other way to evaluate the degree of underrepresentation is to look at the ratio between the percentage of African-Americans in the jury wheel and in the general population. Here, the percentage of African-Americans in the 2005 wheel represented about 84.5 percent of the rate of African-Americans in the general population at the time. For the 2009 pool, this rate was 59.5 percent. Between the two pools, the rate averages 77 percent. This underrepresentation is lower than rates of underrepresentation found to be substantial by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Castaneda, 430 U.S. at 486–87 (MexicanAmericans comprised 39 percent of jury wheel, about half of their rate (79.1 percent) in the general population); Sims v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 404, 407 (1967) (African-Americans constituted 24.4 percent of taxpayer population, but only 4.7 percent of grand jury); Whitus v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 545, 552 (1967) (the 9.1 percent of African-Americans in the grand jury pool constituted about one third of their rate in the general population of taxpayers (27.1 percent), a disparity that “strongly points” to discrimination), but see Turner v. Fouche, 396 U.S. 346, 359 (1970) (the rate of African-Americans in the jury pool (37 percent) represented about 61 percent of the group’s rate in the general population (60 percent), an underrepresentation that is not “so insubstantial as to warrant no corrective action by a federal court charged with the responsibility of enforcing constitutional guarantees,” particularly where 171 of the 178 potential jurors dubiously excluded for lack of “intelligence” or “uprightness” were African-American). The underrepresentation is even less substantial when taking into account the relatively small size of the overall population of African-Americans in the area. -8- Case Nos. 11-5829/5837/5860/6191/6192/6196/6198, United States v. Miller, et al. Maddox takes issue with these figures, noting that the clerk’s “documentation fail[ed] to distinguish between the pools of prospective and grand and petit jurors” and “did not distinguish between those who were merely part of the jury pools and those who actually served.” As to the first issue, the clerk did not distinguish between the jury pools because, according to the affidavit, prospective jurors for both petit and grand juries were drawn from the same jury wheel. As to Maddox’s second point, this Court does not find the absence of this information determinative, as the Constitution protects against the systemic exclusion of identifiable groups from the jury selection process—but does not guarantee a particular make-up of an empaneled jury. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 538 (1975) (“Defendants are not entitled to a jury of any particular composition.”). For the same reason, the Court is not persuaded by the affidavit of a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Tennessee, who—based on his memory alone—declared that “at most . . . a half dozen” of the approximately 1,200 grand jurors he observed from 1978 to 2007 were ethnic minorities.
Even if the underrepresentation were substantial, however, Maddox has not shown evidence that the jury selection process was susceptible to abuse or was not racially neutral. As the deputy clerk’s affidavit explained, the Eastern District of Tennessee summons prospective jurors at random from a jury wheel based on a list of registered voters that have been screened for their qualifications. Rather than alleging this specific process is discriminatory, Maddox relies on Rose v. Mitchell, in which the Supreme Court stated that “one may assume for purposes of this case that the Tennessee method of selecting a grand jury foreman is susceptible of abuse.” 443 U.S. at 566 (emphasis added). Maddox argues the Court “was referencing the historical racial -9- Case Nos. 11-5829/5837/5860/6191/6192/6196/6198, United States v. Miller, et al. discrimination in the South.” Not only was the state-court method of grand jury selection in Rose substantially different than the randomized process used by the federal court here—jurors in Rose were selected by jury commissioners and foremen by judges, see Hobby v. United States, 468 U.S. 339, 347 (1984) (“Rose must be read in light of the method used in Tennessee to select a grand jury and its foreman”)—the Rose Court itself warned against relying on broad arguments of historical discrimination in the place of case-specific evidence in jury-selection cases. 443 U.S. at 572 n.12. Otherwise, Maddox argues that the district court’s reliance on state voter files to compile lists of potential jurors is not race-neutral because of a 5.4 percent disparity between the rate of white and African-American voter registration. However, this Court has explicitly recognized that “[v]oter registration lists are the presumptive statutory source for potential jurors” and that the Constitution does not require a supplemental source “‘simply because an identifiable group votes in a proportion lower than the rest of the population.’” United States v. Odeneal, 517 F.3d 406, 412 (6th Cir. 2008) (citations omitted). Maddox fails to persuasively distinguish Odeneal.
As for Maddox’s equal protection claim based on the alleged lack of grand jury forepersons of color, he again has failed to make a prima facie showing. Though the district court in the Eastern District of Tennessee does not regularly track the racial composition of its grand jury forepersons, the magistrate judge reviewed past questionnaires and found that none of the five empaneled grand juries between 2003 and 2010 had an African-American foreperson, though one did include a black deputy foreperson. Even if this were enough to establish substantial underrepresentation, Maddox failed to argue anywhere that the selection process is susceptible to abuse or is not race-neutral. Not only - 10 - Case Nos. 11-5829/5837/5860/6191/6192/6196/6198, United States v. Miller, et al. is he silent on the issue, but the record contains no specific explanation of how jury forepersons are selected by the district court. See Fed. R. Crim. 6(c) (“The court will appoint one juror as the foreperson and another as the deputy foreperson.”). Without any allegations or evidence, we cannot simply assume impropriety by the court. Finally, the Supreme Court has cautioned that such claims may carry little weight, given the limited role of forepersons in the federal system. “So long as the grand jury itself is properly constituted, there is no risk that the appointment of any one of its members as foreman will distort the overall composition of the array or otherwise taint the operation of the judicial process.” Hobby, 468 U.S. at 348. As a result, Maddox’s equal protection claims fail.