Opinion ID: 566780
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Composition of the Bullock County Jury List

Text: 13 The respondents do not seriously contest the finding that blacks were systematically excluded from the list from which grand and petit juries were chosen in 1959, nor do they rely on Rule 9(a) as grounds for denying relief on this claim. The magistrate's finding of discrimination is well supported. 14 Magistrate Carroll primarily relied on a 1968 decision by then-District Judge Johnson finding that Bullock County's jury list significantly underrepresented the black population, and was unconstitutional. McNab v. Griswold, No. 2653-N (M.D.Ala. Nov. 5, 1968). According to stipulated facts in that case, Bullock County's total population was 71.9% black and 27.1% white, and the population between the ages of 21 and 64, inclusive, was 64.5% black and 34.5% white, yet only 44% of the names on the jury list were names of black people. Judge Johnson held that this unexplained disparity ... is constitutionally impermissible. McNab, slip op. at 3. Magistrate Carroll sensibly inferred that if the jury list underrepresented blacks in 1968, it must have underrepresented them in 1959. 15 This inference is justified. Judge Johnson's decision noted that of the 363 names of black people contained in the jury box in November, 1968, over half had been added after McNab was filed in March, 1968. Slip op. at 2. It is safe to conclude, therefore, that the jury box in 1959 contained even fewer names of black people than it did in 1968. Census data for 1960 (of which we take judicial notice, see, e.g., Barber v. Ponte, 772 F.2d 982, 998 (1st Cir.), vacated on other grounds on reh'g en banc, 772 F.2d at 994 (1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1050, 106 S.Ct. 1272, 89 L.Ed.2d 580 (1986)), confirm that blacks were a clear majority of the population in Bullock County, yet Mr. Hollis' defense attorney and the judge who presided over his case both testified that very few, if any, blacks served on juries. Neither man could remember any blacks being on the venire from which Mr. Hollis' jury was selected, and Mr. Hollis, who testified that he was present when the jury was chosen, said each member of the venire and the petit jury was white. 16 The magistrate asked Mr. Jinks, the attorney who defended Mr. Hollis in 1959, whether there was a statutory or a de facto prohibition against blacks on the jury back then? Mr. Jinks answered, Well, as I remember, Your Honor, there was just none in the jury box, or very few at that time. Later, the magistrate commented: I think that, the sense that I get is that there just were no blacks on juries in Bullock County back in '59. Mr. Jinks responded: I think you're right, Judge. 17 Because in Alabama grand and petit juries were selected from the same pool of potential jurors, 1940 Ala.Code, tit. 30, § 30, a finding that blacks were systematically excluded from the jury list means that both grand and petit juries were unconstitutionally composed.