Opinion ID: 1212813
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Reasonableness of the Michigan Supreme Court's Application of the Clearly Established Right

Text: In addressing Petitioner's claim, the Michigan Supreme Court correctly identified the controlling standard as described in Duren. See People v. Smith, 463 Mich. 199, 615 N.W.2d 1, 2 (2000). However, the Michigan Supreme Court unreasonably applied Duren 's three prong test in rejecting Petitioner's Sixth Amendment claim. As noted above, to satisfy the prima facie test established by Duren, a petitioner must show that a distinctive group was underrepresented in venire panels due to systematic exclusion within the jury selection process. Because it is clear that African Americans are a distinctive group, see, e.g., Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 503, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972), we address only the second and third prong of the Duren prima facie test and the relevant Michigan state court findings. 1. Fair and Reasonable Representation The second prong of the Duren test requires Petitioner to demonstrate that the representation of African Americans on Kent County venire panels was not fair and reasonable. Before the Michigan Supreme Court, Petitioner offered proof that in the six months preceding his trial, African Americans were underrepresented by 18 percent and underrepresented by 34 percent in the month his jury was selected. Additionally, Petitioner argued that in ten of the eleven months following his trial, African Americans were underrepresented by at least 15 percent. However, after applying a number of different measures of underrepresentation, including absolute and comparative disparities, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected these disparities as constitutionally insignificant. In Duren, the Supreme Court utilized the absolute disparity test to determine that women were underrepresented by 35 percent in venire panels in the Missouri district at issue. Duren, 439 U.S. at 365 n. 23, 99 S.Ct. 664. The absolute disparity test compares the members of a distinctive group that are jury eligible with those that appear on the venire. However, in the years since Duren, the Court has not mandated that a particular method be used to measure underrepresentation in Sixth Amendment challenges. Consequently, courts across the country have utilized a number of methods, including absolute disparity and comparative disparity, to measure whether a distinctive group has been underrepresented on venire panels. See United States v. Forest, 355 F.3d 942, 954 (6th Cir.2004) (absolute disparity); United States v. Orange, 447 F.3d 792, 798-99 (10th Cir.2006) (absolute and comparative disparity). Applying the absolute disparity measurement of underrepresentation to the instant case, the disparity between jury-eligible African Americans in the community and those who appeared on Kent County venires is negligible. Here, 7.28 percent of African Americans in Kent County were eligible for jury service. During the relevant time period for Petitioner's trial, 56 of the 929 individuals who appeared for venire panels in Kent County were African American. This represents approximately six percent of the total pool of veniremen. Therefore, the absolute disparity between jury-eligible African Americans and those that actually appeared for venire panels was 1.28 percent. Courts across the country have held that absolute disparities in this range are not constitutionally significant for purposes of Duren 's underrepresentation requirement. See, e.g., United States v. Booker, No. 05-1929, 2007 WL 2492427, at  2 (6th Cir. 2007) (finding absolute disparity of 2.6 percent constitutionally insignificant); United States v. Rioux, 97 F.3d 648, 658 (2d Cir. 1996) (finding absolute disparity of 2.68 percent a constitutionally insignificant disparity when examining Sixth Amendment challenge to composition of venire panel). [2] However, the wisdom of applying the absolute disparity test to measure the underrepresentation of the small African American population in Kent County is questionable. See United States v. Jackman, 46 F.3d 1240, 1247 (2d Cir.1995) (finding the absolute disparities test to be inappropriate when applied to an underrepresented group that is a small percentage of the total population....). As the Second Circuit noted in Foster v. Sparks, 506 F.2d 805 (5th Cir.1975): [A]n intractable use of the absolute measure may, in certain circumstances ... produce distorted results. For example, if a district with 10% non-white population has .5% non-whites in the wheel, the 9.5% disparity may not evoke disapproval under an absolute measure but may require it under a comparative measure. Id. at 835. Indeed, even if African Americans in Kent County were never called for jury service, the absolute disparity would still fall below the 10 percent figure that courts have found to be a threshold indicator of a constitutionally significant disparity. Where the distinctive group alleged to have been underrepresented is small, as is the case here, the comparative disparity test is the more appropriate measure of underrepresentation. Indeed, [w]hile ... both [absolute and comparative disparity] provide a simplified statistical shorthand for a complex issue, the comparative disparity calculation provides a more meaningful measure of systematic impact vis-a-vis the `distinctive' group, United States v. Rogers, 73 F.3d 774, 776-77 (8th Cir. 1996), inasmuch as it measures the diminished likelihood that members of an underrepresented group, when compared to the population as a whole, will be called for jury service. Ramseur, 983 F.2d at 1231-32. In the instant case, African Americans were underrepresented on Kent County venire panels by 18 percent in the six months prior to Petitioner's trial as measured by comparative disparity. In the month during which Petitioner went to trial, this comparative disparity increased to 34 percent. In other words, the number of African Americans on Kent County venire panels was 18 and 34 percent lower than one would have expected based on random selection factors. These figures, which are larger than those revealed by the absolute disparity test, are sufficient to demonstrate that the representation of African American veniremen in Kent County at the time of Petitioner's trial was unfair and unreasonable. United States v. Rogers, 73 F.3d 774, 777 (8th Cir.1996) (finding comparative disparity of over 30 percent to meet the underrepresentation prong of the Duren prima facie test where African Americans comprised only 1.87 percent of the jury-eligible population); Ramseur, 983 F.2d at 1232 (finding comparative disparity of 40 percent of African Americans to be sufficient to establish underrepresentation of African Americans in jury pool). Thus, Petitioner has established that African Americans were underrepresented on Kent County venire panels. Resolving the question of underrepresentation on Kent County venire panels, however, does not resolve the question of whether Petitioner has met his burden under AEDPA. To prevail under AEDPA, Petitioner must demonstrate not only that the Michigan Supreme Court was incorrect, but that its application of federal law was unreasonable. The Michigan Supreme Court found that Petitioner's figures did not demonstrate that African Americans were significantly underrepresented on Kent County venire panels. After a cursory discussion of the absolute and comparative disparity tests, the supreme court concluded that defendant's statistical evidence failed to establish a legally significant disparity under either the absolute or comparative disparity tests. Smith, 615 N.W.2d at 3. Other courts have reached the same conclusion when faced with such disparities. See, e.g., Johnson v. McCaughtry, 92 F.3d 585, 594 (7th Cir.1996) (comparative disparity of 33 percent insufficient to satisfy second prong of Duren prima facie case). Because of the relatively small size of the African American population in Kent County, however, none of the applicable tests can appropriately measure the underrepresentation that occurred on Kent County venire panels. Rather, as the concurrence in Smith noted, because the jury-eligible black population of Kent County is small, and the sample of the overall population represented by the jury pool is also small, none of the analytical methods are particularly well-suited to defendant's case. 615 N.W.2d at 11 (Cavanagh, J., concurring). In such cases, [i]f a jury selection process appears ex ante likely to systematically exclude a distinctive group, that is, the system contains `non-benign' factors, a court may essentially give a defendant the benefit of the doubt on underrepresentation, even if the system ex post proves to work no systematic exclusion. Id. Other courts have similarly found significant underrepresentation in the context of small minority populations that would otherwise not satisfy the requisite burden under Duren where non-benign factors may be operating to produce such underrepresentation. See United States v. Jackman, 46 F.3d 1240, 1247-48 (2d Cir.1995) (citing United States v. Biaggi, 909 F.2d 662, 678 (2d Cir.1990)). Thus, the Michigan Supreme Court properly examined Duren 's third prong given the significant risk of systematic exclusion of African Americans. However, for the reasons discussed below, we find that the Michigan Supreme Court unreasonably applied federal law in concluding that Kent County's jury selection process work[ed] no systematic exclusion, id., and that Petitioner therefore did not establish the prima facie case under Duren. 2. Systematic Exclusion To establish a prima facie case of a violation of the Sixth Amendment's right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community, Petitioner must demonstrate that African American underrepresentation occurred as a result of systematic exclusion from venire panels. Under Duren, disproportionate exclusion of a distinctive group from the venire need not be intentional to be unconstitutional, but it must be systematic. Randolph v. People of the State of California, 380 F.3d 1133, 1141 (9th Cir.2004). The Supreme Court has described systematic exclusion to mean exclusion inherent in the particular jury-selection process utilized. Duren, 439 U.S. at 366, 99 S.Ct. 664. In his petition for writ of habeas corpus, Petitioner advances three arguments regarding systematic exclusion from Kent County venire panels. First, Petitioner asserts that Kent County's practice of assigning jurors to district court panels prior to assigning jurors to circuit courts produced the underrepresentation of African Americans on Kent County circuit court venires. Second, Petitioner argues that Kent County's practice of granting excused absences from jury duty for reasons such as lack of transportation or child care resulted in the disproportionate excusal or exclusion of African Americans from venire panels. Third, Petitioner attributes African American underrepresentation to Kent County's failure to send additional letters to areas with high concentrations of African Americans and nonresponders. In examining Petitioner's contentions regarding the connection between the underrepresentation of African Americans and the jury selection procedures employed by Kent County, the Michigan Supreme Court found that: We further agree with our concurring colleague that defendant has not shown how the alleged siphoning of African-American jurors to district courts affected the circuit court jury pool. The record does not disclose whether the district court jury pools contained more, fewer, or approximately the same percentage of minority jurors as the circuit court jury pool. Defendant has simply failed to carry his burden of proof in this regard. We also agree with our concurring colleague that the influence of social and economic factors on juror participation does not demonstrate a systematic exclusion of African-Americans. The Sixth Amendment does not require Kent County to counteract these factors. Finally, even presuming that defendant can rely exclusively on statistics, he has not made the requisite showing in this case. In Duren, the Court noted that the defendant proved that a large discrepancy occurred in every weekly venire for approximately one year. Here, while defendant's proof may satisfy any duration requirement, the disparities over that time fell far short of those in Duren .... We therefore conclude that defendant has not shown a systematic exclusion of African-Americans for the Kent County Circuit Court jury pool. Smith, 615 N.W.2d at 4. We find that the Michigan Supreme Court unreasonably applied federal law when it held that the underrepresentation of African Americans did not occur as a result of systematic exclusion. In the instant case, Petitioner demonstrated that African Americans were underrepresented on Kent County venire panels by between 15 and 18 percent over a period of 17 months and 34 percent in the month during which his jury was drawn. While this disparity may not rise to the level of demonstrating systematic exclusion per se, this persistent disparity combined with Petitioner's evidence that this disparity was not random was sufficient to establish systematic exclusion within the meaning of Duren. United States v. Rogers, 73 F.3d 774, 777 (8th Cir.1996) (The extremely low probability that the underrepresentation would have occurred by chance alone provides further evidence that the system itself contributed to the lack of African-American participation in the venire pools.). Rather, for the reasons described below, Petitioner demonstrated that the underrepresentation of African Americans was inherent in the particular jury-selection process utilized, and therefore met his burden to demonstrate that African Americans were systematically excluded from Kent County venire panels. In the instant case, Kent County allowed prospective jurors to essentially opt out of jury service if jury duty would constitute a hardship based on child care concerns, transportation issues or the inability to take time from work. The evidence in the record suggests that the excuses allowed by Kent County with respect to child care and transportation disproportionately impacted African American prospective jurors. [3] In Kent County, for example, 64 percent of African American households with children were headed by single parents, while only 19 percent of white families were headed by single parent households. Thus, allowing an excuse for the inability to find child care with no questions asked would likely disproportionately exclude African Americans from venire panels. Indeed, an expert testified that allowing individuals to opt out of jury service as a result of a non-statutory excuse removes the randomness from the jury pool selection process. The introduction of non-random factors into a jury selection process has been found to support an inference of systematic exclusion. See, e.g., United States v. Young, 822 F.2d 1234, 1239 (2d Cir.1987); United States v. Osorio, 801 F.Supp. 966, 978 (D.Conn. 1992). The lack of random selection in the Kent County jury selection process leads us to conclude that the underrepresentation of African Americans resulted from processes inherent in the particular jury-selection process utilized. Duren, 439 U.S. at 366, 99 S.Ct. 664. [4] The Michigan Supreme Court, however, rejected this evidence after finding that the Sixth Amendment is not concerned with the disparate impact of the non-statutory excuses because, in the supreme court's estimation, such disparities were rooted in social and economic factors. Contrary to the conclusion reached by the Michigan Supreme Court, the Sixth Amendment is concerned with social or economic factors when the particular system of selecting jurors makes such factors relevant to who is placed on the qualifying list and who is ultimately called to or excused from service on a venire panel. [5] Indeed, the disproportionate utilization of juror excuses by a given group may have clear importance where the Sixth Amendment's fair-cross section requirement is involved. Hirst v. Gertzen, 676 F.2d 1252, 1261 (9th Cir.1982) (citing Duren, 439 U.S. at 357, 99 S.Ct. 664). If, for example, a county created a juror exemption or an excuse for renters where 90 percent of African Americans in the county fell into that category, any resulting underrepresentation would clearly be inherent in the system inasmuch as the system made a socio-economic factor (i.e., renting) relevant to the makeup of the jury pool. Although certainly less drastic, the same principle applies in the instant case. Here, the particular jury selection process employed by Kent County made social or economic factors relevant to whether an otherwise qualified prospective juror would be excused from service; and because such social or economic factors disproportionately impact African Americans in Kent County, such factors produced systematic exclusion within the meaning of Duren inasmuch as they are inherent in the particular jury selection process utilized. Duren, 439 U.S. at 366, 99 S.Ct. 664. Moreover, those African Americans that actually appeared for jury duty were diverted away from circuit courts because of the priority given to the district court in Grand Rapids. Before October 1993, Kent County summoned individuals from the qualified list to appear for juries at district courts prior to assigning jurors for county circuit courts. As part of this priority assignment process, prospective jurors from Grand Rapids were solely designated for venire panels for the district court in Grand Rapids. It is undisputed in the record that Grand Rapids is the city with the largest African American population in the county. Indeed, although African Americans are approximately 18 percent of the total population of Grand Rapids, the African American population in Grand Rapids represents approximately 85 percent of the African American population in Kent County. Moreover, by statute, once an individual was assigned to a district court venire, he or she was not placed back on the qualified list for the circuit court because of a statutory exclusion for individuals who served on a jury in the previous twelve months. As a consequence of the assignment process, regardless of the number of African Americans assigned to district courts, fewer African Americans were available to serve as jurors for county circuit courts. Indeed, the aforementioned statistics were confirmed by the testimony of two witnesses intimately familiar with the jury selection process in Kent County at the time Petitioner's jury was drawn. Richard Hillary, director of the Kent County Public Defender's Office and Co-Chair of the Jury Minority Representation Committee of the Grand Rapids Bar Association, testified that he routinely observed very few African Americans on Kent County venire panels. Hillary testified that the Jury Minority Representation Committee studied the phenomenon and determined that we were losing minorities by choosing the District Court jurors first and not returning the unused ones to the ... pool that the Circuit Court was taken from. Kim Foster, the Kent County Court Administrator, admitted as much during his testimony. During the evidentiary hearing, Foster stated that Kent County revised the juror assignment policy based on the belief that the respective districts swallowed up most of the minority jurors, and circuit court was essentially left with whatever was left, which did not represent the entire county.... We find that this evidence, combined with the duration of the underrepresentation of African Americans, demonstrates that such underrepresentation came as a consequence of a factor that was inherent in the jury assignment system. On direct appeal, the Michigan Supreme Court found that Petitioner did not demonstrate systematic exclusion because he did not provide the precise number of jurors that were diverted from circuit courts. The systematic exclusion requirement as discussed in Duren, however, does not mean that a defendant's proof must be unequivocal, as the Michigan Supreme Court required, but instead, the proof must be sufficient to support an inference that a particular process results in the underrepresentation of a distinctive group. Duren, 439 U.S. at 363, 366-67, 99 S.Ct. 664; Jackman, 46 F.3d at 1248. In Duren, the Supreme Court considered whether a statute that provided an exemption for women from jury duty during the jury selection process violated the fair cross-section requirement of the Sixth Amendment. There, women were underrepresented on weekly venire panels over a one year period. Although women constituted 54 percent of the population, they were only 30 percent of the potential jurors who were summonsed and 14.5 percent of those who appeared for jury duty. Based on when the underrepresentation of women appeared in the jury selection process and the duration of the underrepresentation, the Court found that the exemption functioned to systematically exclude women. In so holding, the Court rejected a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court which found that no Sixth Amendment violation occurred because petitioner had not unequivocally demonstrated the extent to which the low percentage of women was due to the automatic exemption for women, rather than to sex-neutral exemptions such as that for persons over age 65. Duren, 439 U.S. at 363, 99 S.Ct. 664. Thus, although there were other exemptions that could have affected the representation of women, the petitioner was not required to disprove the other exemptions as causes or to demonstrate precisely the number of women electing to opt out of jury duty under the exemption. Id. at 366-67, 99 S.Ct. 664. The exclusionary process that is inherent in the system of selecting prospective jurors need not be facially exclusionary or as stark as Duren, however, to raise an inference of systematic exclusion. [6] In Jackman, 46 F.3d at 1248, for example, the Second Circuit found that the underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos on venire panels was due to systematic exclusion where a computerized process that predominately generated the qualified juror list inadvertently omitted residents of two cities with the highest minority populations. There, the court considered a jury selection procedure adopted by county officials to correct a previous jury selection process that had been ruled unconstitutional because it excluded residents of two cities that accounted for 62.93% of the voting-age Black population and 68.09% of the voting-age Hispanic population in the division.... Id. Rather than discard the old list, the jury clerk for the county merely supplemented the list created under the unconstitutional system with names from the revised representative list on an as-needed basis. For the venire panel challenged on appeal, for example, the jury clerk drew 84 percent of the names from the unconstitutional list (i.e., exclusionary list) and added only 16 percent of the names from a new (i.e., representative) list. While the court did not have precise figures regarding the number of minorities excluded, the court nevertheless found that the underrepresentation of African Americans and Hispanics was quite obviously due to the system by which juries were selected because of the continued exclusion of a significant percentage of the minority population. Id. at 1248 (quoting Duren, 439 U.S. at 367, 99 S.Ct. 664). In the instant case, like Duren and Jackman, a substantial percentage of African Americans in Kent County were impacted by the jury excuse and the district court priority assignment processes. Indeed, the comparison to Jackman is particularly apt with respect to the district court assignment plan. Inasmuch as Grand Rapids represented 85 percent of the African American population in Kent County, the assignment of jurors away from circuit courts, even when they did not ultimately serve as petit jurors, essentially omits those residents from the available pool of circuit court juries. Thus, taken together, Petitioner's proof with respect to the juror excuses and the diversion of jurors to the Grand Rapids district court under the pre-1993 assignment plan satisfies Duren 's third prong. Given the small percentages of African American jurors and the impact that just one or two can have on the overall percentage of African Americans represented on venire panels, [7] we find that this evidence establishes that the underrepresentation of African Americans was caused by systematic exclusion inasmuch as this selection process resulted in fewer African Americans being eligible for service on circuit county juries. The inference raised by Petitioner's proof is much stronger than in cases where we have rejected claims of systematic exclusion. In Ford v. Seabold, 841 F.2d 677 (6th Cir.1988), we held that the selection of jurors from a neutral master list, without more, can[not] be construed as `systematic exclusion' as defined in Duren merely because the percentage of women selected does not precisely mirror the percentage of women in the entire community. In United States v. Allen, 160 F.3d 1096, 1104 (6th Cir.1998), we found that the defendants asserting that African Americans were systematically excluded because their venire panel was populated by persons previously stricken from other panels did not satisfy their burden because they have neither asserted nor provided even a shred or evidence indicating that only whites are reassigned, while blacks are thrown back into the small wheel. Here, Petitioner has demonstrated more than the selection of jurors from a neutral master list, he has offered evidence sufficient to raise an inference that the particular processes used by Kent County in constituting its qualified and second lists systematically exclude African American jurors and thus has satisfied the third prong of the prima facie test. Our conclusion that Petitioner has established a prima facie violation of the Sixth Amendment's fair cross-section requirement, however, does not end the inquiry. Once a party has met the prima facie test, the burden shifts to the state to demonstrate that a significant state interest [is] manifestly and primarily advanced by those aspects of the jury selection process, such as exemption criteria, that result in the disproportionate exclusion of a distinctive group. Id. at 367-68, 99 S.Ct. 664. The first aspect of the jury selection process that must be justified by Respondent is the excusals for economic hardship. In Duren, the Supreme Court anticipated that jury selection plans would preserve excuses from jury service based on economic or personal hardship. The Duren court noted, it is unlikely that reasonable exemptions, such as those based on special hardship, incapacity, or community needs, `would pose substantial threats that the remaining pool of jurors would not be representative of the community.' Duren, 439 U.S. at 370, 99 S.Ct. 664 (quoting Taylor, 419 U.S. at 534, 95 S.Ct. 692). We find that the state has a significant interest avoiding undue burdens on individuals by allowing excuses based on the inability to obtain transportation and in assuring that those members of the family responsible for the care of children are available to do so. Id. See also Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217, 225, 66 S.Ct. 984, 90 L.Ed. 1181 (1946) (It is clear that a federal judge would be justified in excusing a daily wage earner for whom jury service would entail an undue financial hardship.). [8] Thus, Respondent has met her burden with respect to Kent County's excusal of prospective jurors citing hardships. Respondent, however, has not demonstrated a significant interest in the assignment of Grand Rapids residents to the 61 st District Court in Grand Rapids prior to assignment in Kent County circuit courts. Indeed, Kent County has eliminated the priority assignment policy based precisely on the grounds highlighted by Petitioner in this case. Therefore, Petitioner has demonstrated a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community and the Michigan Supreme Court's conclusion to the contrary constitutes an unreasonable application of Duren.