Opinion ID: 1502430
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Jury Issues

Text: After the pretrial hearing on the motion to suppress the confession, the defendant waived his right to a jury and specifically requested a nonjury trial. Counsel advanced several reasons for fearing that certain aspects of the pending trial might prejudice a jury against his client, citing, inter alia, such factors as the defendant's race (he is white, the victim was black), a homosexual relationship between the defendant and Frazier, whom he expected to call as a witness, the prospect of psychiatric testimony, and the likelihood of evidence of prior convictions for other criminal offenses. The government objected, relying on Super. Ct.Cr.R. 23(a), which requires the consent of the prosecuting officer to a jury waiver. The court refused to approve the request, but allowed counsel to participate in extensive voir dire as the individual jurors were impanelled. On appeal, counsel argues vigorously that the denial of appellant's request for a nonjury trial constituted prejudicial error, even though the court below felt that because of Rule 23(a) it had no other choice. A similar rule is in effect in the federal courts and appellant cites a Supreme Court opinion, Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24, 85 S.Ct. 783, 13 L.Ed.2d 630 (1965), as authority for the proposition that trial judges in some circumstances are not bound by prosecutorial refusal to waive a jury trial. In Singer, a defendant indicted on numerous counts of mail fraud, proposed to waive his right to trial by jury, butas in the case at barthe government declined to go along, whereupon the trial judge considered himself bound to impanel a jury. After his conviction, Singer argued that as the Constitution confers only on defendants the right to a jury trial, he was entitled to waive that right notwithstanding government objection under Rule 23(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The Supreme Court turned down this argument, but in a unanimous opinion written for the court, Chief Justice Warren observed: We need not determine in this case whether there might be some circumstances where a defendant's reasons for wanting to be tried by a judge alone are so compelling that the Government's insistence on trial by jury would result in the denial to a defendant of an impartial trial. [380 U.S. at 37, 85 S.Ct. at 791.] According to appellant, the kind of circumstances to which the Supreme Court adverted in Singer were present in his case and were so compelling that the ruling of the trial court prevented his being tried before an impartial body. In his brief, appellant cites a number of opinions of federal appellate and district courts recognizing that there are indeed situations justifying a court's disregard of government insistence upon a jury trial. In none of them, however, was it held that the refusal to grant a nonjury trial was a ground for reversing the particular conviction. See United States v. Ceja, 451 F.2d 399 (1st Cir. 1971); United States v. Farries, 328 F.Supp. 1034 (M.D.Pa.1971), aff'd, 459 F.2d 1057 (3d Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 888, 93 S.Ct. 143, 34 L.Ed.2d 145 (1972); United States v. Wright, 491 F.2d 942 (6th Cir. 1974); United States v. Kramer, 355 F.2d 891 (7th Cir. 1966), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 384 U.S. 100, 86 S.Ct. 1366, 16 L.Ed.2d 396 (1966); United States v. Harris, 314 F.Supp. 437 (D.Minn.1970). It is appellant's point that while the grounds advanced unsuccessfully by some of the defendants for disregarding prosecution insistence upon a jury trial, e. g., racial or religious prejudice, the heinous character of the offenses charged, prior criminal records, contemporary news stories of similar crimes, etc., coincided with some of the reasons given by appellant to support his request, in none of the cited cases was there a combination of the reasons which appellant argues made impossible an impartial trial by jury. We have studied these decisions and agree with appellant that none of these is on all fours with his. Nevertheless, we do not deem the circumstances present in the instant case as so provocative of passion, prejudice, and public feeling that fair adjudication of the issues by a jury was beyond the realm of reasonable probability. For one thing, so little pretrial publicity was accorded this case by the press that it was most unlikely that any prospective jury had formed an opinion prior to trial. [7] Nor was this a case where racial animosity might have caused a jury to ignore or discount a defense of mistaken identity or defense testimony contradicting the version of the facts put forth by government witnesses, for at no stage of the trial did appellant present any evidence to prove that the fatal strangulation or the rape was not committed by himhis only defense being the lack of mental capacity to establish guilt. We are not impressed by the argument that the use of psychiatric testimony or evidence of homosexual conduct by the defendant was bound to inflame a jury composed of laymen against him. [8] Judicial notice may be taken that in the vast majority of reported cases, where insanity has been pleaded, defendants have been content to let juries appraise the worth of the opinions of psychiatrists. And in a jurisdiction where the elected legislative body has repealed a law making homosexual intercourse a crime, we can scarcely infer widespread community prejudice against persons of such sexual orientation. The record discloses that the court was aware that some individual members of the jury venire might indeed harbor such prejudices. Consequently, it allowed great latitude to trial counsel in participating in voir dire when the jury was being selected. None of the prospective jurors admitted to hostile feelings against homosexuals. When two expressed reservations about the credibility of psychiatrists, or drunkenness as a defense, the court sustained challenges for cause. In view of this aspect of the record, we do not regard the instant case as of the kind envisaged by the Supreme Court when it spoke of circumstances . . . so compelling that an exception to the Singer rule was warranted. In reaching this conclusion, we have examined other arguments of the appellant, including his contention that the real motive of the prosecution in objecting to a jury trial was ignoble, but are not persuaded by them. A more serious criticism of the possible fairness of the trial than the fact that the defense's objection to any jury was overruled was the racial composition of the jury itself. All the jurors who heard the case were black; the defendant was a white man charged with the rape and murder of a black woman. In his brief, appellant charges that the government by exercising its peremptory challenges to remove a number of white males from the panel was responsible for the unbalanced racial makeup of the jury eventually seated. Ever since 1880, when a statute qualifying only white people for jury duty was struck down as unconstitutional, Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that no state or county can exclude from jury service any identifiable part of the community. Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 55 S.Ct. 579, 79 L.Ed. 1074 (1935); Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940). This principle, founded on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, has not been limited to race, but applies to groups identifiable by national origin, Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 74 S.Ct. 667, 98 L.Ed. 866 (1954), or sex, Ballard v. United States, 329 U.S. 187, 67 S.Ct. 261, 91 L.Ed. 181 (1946). In more recent years, the Court has extended this doctrine by holding that irrespective of whether a particular defendant is a member of an excluded class, the venire ( i. e., the pool of prospective jurors drawn for service at any given term of court for grand jury or petit jury service) should reflect a fair cross-section of the community in order to insure the Sixth Amendment rights of an accused to an impartial jury. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975); Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972). [9] In this jurisdiction where, according to census figures, approximately 70% of the population is black, this would mean that the makeup of the pool of prospective petit jurors drawn for any given period of service should reflect the census ratio in order to satisfy the requirements of Taylor and the controlling statute. Here, appellant does not contend that the racial composition of the pool from which his jury was drawn failed to mirror the community, but rather that the use of peremptory challenges by the prosecution made the jury which tried him completely unrepresentative. The line of Supreme Court decisions requiring representative community characteristics, however, have dealt entirely with the jury pool or jury venire, not the composition of any particular petit jury. The Court itself made that distinction clear when it was confronted with the very point (except that the races were reversed) appellant has raised in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 442 (1964). The record there disclosed that in the process of selecting a jury to try a black defendant indicted for a capital offense, the county prosecutor struck from the panel peremptorily the only six Negroes among the veniremen available. Thus, no one of the defendant's race served on the jury, which eventually returned a guilty verdict. In holding that the very essence of the rights of counsel on both sides to make peremptory challenges eliminated any requirement for justifying their exercise, the Court said: In the light of the purpose of the peremptory system and the function it serves in a pluralistic society in connection with the institution of jury trial, we cannot hold that the Constitution requires an examination of the prosecutor's reasons for the exercise of his challenges in any given case. The presumption in any particular case must be that the prosecutor is using the State's challenges to obtain a fair and impartial jury to try the case before the court. The presumption is not overcome and the prosecutor therefore subjected to examination by allegations that in the case at hand all Negroes were removed from the jury or that they were removed because they were Negroes. Any other result, we think would establish a rule wholly at odds with the preemptory challenge system as we know it. Hence the motion to strike the trial jury was properly denied in this case. [ Id. at 222, 85 S.Ct. at 837.] The opinion made only one exception to the rule that peremptory challenges by the prosecutor, irrespective of their impact on the final jury selection, are immune from review. In a case where an appellant made a showing that in the jurisdiction where he was tried, the prosecution had always used peremptory challenges to keep Negroes off juries, the opinion indicated that it might view the situation as demonstrating systematic exclusion of a particular race. The Court emphasized that the burden of proving the existence of such a system, however, was on the defendant. The Swain decision has been criticized by some commentators as making the right to jury pools which are really a cross-section of the community an empty one. Is is argued that the mere presence of fellow members of a minority group on a jury venire affords little or no protection against racial or religious prejudice to a defendant, if none of his fellows is seated on the panel which tries him. See, e. g. Comment, A Case Study of the Peremptory Challenge: A Subtle Strike at Equal Protection and Due Process, 18 St. Louis U.L.J. 662 (1974); Comment, Swain v. Alabama: A Constitutional Blueprint for the Perpetuation of the All-White Jury, 52 Va.L.Rev. 1157, 1173-75 (1966); Note, Limiting the Peremptory Challenge: Representation of Groups on Petit Juries, 86 Yale L.J., 1715, 1738-41 (1977). These criticisms seem to have borne fruit in at least two jurisdictions. Very recently the highest courts in California and Massachusetts have issued opinions refusing to follow Swain. See People v. Wheeler, 22 Cal.3d 258, 148 Cal. Rptr. 890, 583 P.2d 748 (1978); Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 387 N.E.2d 499 (1979). [10] In each instance, however, the authors of the majority opinions grounded their holdings on provisions in their respective state constitutions, even though they hinted that they also disagreed with the Swain rationale. Needless to say, such local provisions have no bearing here. Appellant argues that the peremptory challenge tactics of the prosecutor also reflected an ignoble motive, but filed no motion in the trial court challenging the qualifications of the jury as finally seated. Plainly, the Swain opinion precludes this court from drawing any such invidious inference. In affirming the convictions for first-degree murder, felony murder, and rapeall offenses stemming from the same criminal transactionwe did consider the possible relevance of Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 100 S.Ct. 1432, 63 L.Ed.2d 715 (1980), reversing and remanding 379 A.2d 1152 (D.C.App., 1977)a decision of the Supreme Court which came down after the case before us was argued. In Whalen we had sustained a conviction for felony murder and rape, holding that even when a killing is an incident of a felonious sexual assault the two offenses were not merged. This decision was based upon our construction of the applicable provisions of the D.C.Code in which nothing [was found] in this legislation to suggest that the underlying offense (rape) [was] nonprosecutable under the merger rule when the defendant was charged with felony murder. [11] Accordingly, we let stand the sentence imposed for rape in that case which was to take effect after the felony-murder sentence had been completed. When this case was briefed and argued appellant did not raise the question of mergerassuming, no doubt, that our Whalen opinion was the law of this jurisdiction. Contrary to our view, a majority of the Supreme Court held that rape was a lesser included offense under the D.C. Code, for conviction for a killing in the course of rape cannot be had without proving all the elements of the latter offense. Id. 445 U.S. at 693-95, 100 S.Ct. at 1438-40. Therefore, the Court reasoned that multiple punishments ( i. e., cumulative sentences) were not authorized by Congress. In the case at bar, however, the trial court in contradistinction to consecutive sentences provided that the prison terms imposed for each of the offenses should be served concurrently. Thus, it is not obvious that what the Supreme Court perceived as error in the Whalen case was committed here. Nevertheless, there have been holdings that even a concurrent sentence is an element of punishment because of potential collateral consequences. [12] Consequently, we are disturbed by the concurrent prison term imposed for the rape conviction and remand this narrow aspect of the case for resentencing. [13] We are not disturbed by the separate convictions and sentences for first-degree premeditated murder and felony murder, as we are bound by Blango v. United States, D.C.App., 373 A.2d 885, 888 (1977).