Opinion ID: 1298608
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Contra Costa County Jury Selection Procedures.

Text: Defendant contends that the procedure by which the Contra Costa County Jury Commissioner summons from the pool and forms venires of prospective jurors for weekly assignment to trial courts results in panels on which Blacks are underrepresented, and that the imbalance is the product of a systematic exclusion of Black residents of that county. [3] On this basis he argues that he was denied his right under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and article I, section 16, of the California Constitution, to trial by an impartial jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community. More specifically, his claim is that the evidence he presented during a hearing prior to his first trial established a prima facie violation of the fair cross-section requirement, thus shifting to the People the burden of rebutting that showing. (1a) (See fn. 4.) The People both dispute defendant's claim that a prima facie violation was established, and argue that the issue is not one preserved for appeal from the judgment imposed following the second trial because defendant did not demonstrate that the selection procedures at that trial were defective and/or that the panel from which the petit jury that actually convicted him was drawn was underrepresentative. [4] We shall address defendant's claim on the merits. Although, technically, the motion was raised at the first trial which ended in a mistrial, the trial court thereafter ruled that all motions made at the first trial would be deemed to have been renewed and ruled upon in the same manner at the second trial.
The motion challenging the method of jury selection was first made and denied without prejudice to renewal on October 27, 1978, the second day of the first trial, and was renewed on November 1, 1978, after the jury had been selected. At the hearing on the renewed motion the Contra Costa County jury commissioner testified regarding the manner in which jurors are procured, and how the prospective jurors sent to the courtroom for defendant's jury selection had been chosen. His undisputed testimony reveals this sequence of juror selection. The jury commissioner oversees the procurement of jurors for the year's jury pool, and summons jurors on a weekly basis as needed by the courts. The master jury list for the year is compiled from the Department of Motor Vehicles' list of persons holding driver's licenses or identification cards, as well as the voters registration list. After a computerized merge of the lists, a computer process creates a file of names adequate to supply the projected number of persons it will be necessary to qualify as jurors for the coming year. Affidavits are sent to these persons for completion and return to determine if the person is qualified for jury service. In 1978, 30,000 affidavits were sent, and 15,000 respondents were found to be qualified and placed on the master list for the year. When the data processing unit is advised of the number of prospective jurors who will be needed for a given Monday, a computer selects the names from the master list using a random process. Summonses are then sent to those people. For Monday of the week defendant's first trial was to begin summonses were sent to 468 persons, of whom approximately 290 appeared at the roll call on October 23, 1978. Two hundred and two did not respond or had been deferred prior to the Monday roll call. Deferrals were granted pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 202 [5] on grounds of hardship to the person called or to the public. Deferral does not necessarily excuse service, but may postpone service to a later date. Among the reasons for deferral accepted by the jury commissioner and the members of his staff who made such decisions were medical problems or illness, business hardships, absence from the county or state, financial hardship, and inability to arrange child care. Transportation problems were considered an aspect of financial hardship. The jury commissioner could interview a prospective juror seeking deferral and might require written support for the claimed basis for deferral. Race and sex of the prospective juror were not to be taken into account in granting deferrals. The jury commissioner and his staff followed a very firm policy that no juror be rejected because of political affiliation, religious faith, race, color, social or economic status, occupation, or sex. The racial composition of a particular panel assigned to a trial department is random. [6] The commissioner's records of the October 23, 1978, panel showed that 23 persons had not appeared and had not been excused. Second notices had been sent to those persons. The post office returned the summonses sent to 17 persons as undeliverable or indicated that these persons had moved from the county. Business hardship was given as the reason forty-seven persons were excused; nine were excused for reasons related to financial hardship; eight were excused because of family or child care problems; forty-three were excused for medical reasons; two were not qualified, having suffered felony convictions; one was in the Navy; twenty-seven were on vacation or out of the county, including students attending schools out of the area; one was excused because of inability to understand English; one had a judicial excuse; and one had a conflicting court appearance. After the Monday morning roll call another 25 to 30 persons were excused for similar reasons, leaving a panel of 266 available prospective jurors. The experience with the October 23, 1978, panel was consistent with the excusal rate for those categories for any other week. Of the two hundred sixty-six prospective jurors available for that week, all, with the possible exception of three, were assigned to courtrooms for the six trials, including that of defendant, anticipated for the week. On October 26, 1978, 80 prospective jurors were assigned to the department in which defendant's trial was conducted. [7] A 1977 document entitled Contra Costa County, A Profile, prepared by the Contra Costa County Planning Department, and containing some demographic characteristics of the county, was admitted in evidence. That document, based on the 1975 census, reflected a county population of 582,820 in 1975. The population of Richmond was 70,126, or approximately 12 percent of the total population. The total Black population of the county was 45,452, and of Richmond was 28,956. Thus, approximately 63.7 percent of the Black residents of the county lived in Richmond. The Planning Department report did not, however, break down the Black population in Richmond between persons below 18 years of age and those 18 and over, i.e., the potential jury-eligible Black population, and the jury commissioner had done no study to establish those statistics. The commissioner believed that defense counsel was correct in his assertion that of the 468 persons who were called for jury duty on October 23, 1978, 6.6 percent were from Richmond, and 7.5 percent of the panel assigned to defendant's trial were from Richmond. The jury commissioner had addressed each Monday morning panel of prospective jurors that had been assembled since he assumed his office in April 1978. He believed that on Monday, October 23, 1978, there were a few potential Black jurors among the persons summoned. In an average week there would be between five and ten potential Black jurors and this week appeared to him to be an average week. As a guess the average number of Blacks would be six (or less than 3 percent) in a weekly panel. The only difference in the October 23, 1978, panel was its size, slightly larger than usual because more persons than the customary 430 had been summoned. [8]
(2a) Defendant did not offer any evidence other than statistical evidence of underrepresentation of Blacks on jury venires over a six-month period, and the testimony of the jury commissioner regarding the manner in which jurors were summoned, excused, and the weekly venires made up. That evidence established that, although the county was not in compliance with statutory requirements for written policies, the selection criteria in use were neutral with regard to race, ethnicity, sex, and religion. Defendant did not identify any aspect of the selection process as the probable cause of the disparity. Even with regard to his speculative assertion that hardship deferrals were responsible, he did not offer any evidence to suggest that these deferrals were constitutionally suspect. We shall conclude, therefore, that defendant failed to carry his burden of establishing a prima facie case under the third prong Duren v. Missouri, supra, 439 U.S. 357, 364  that this underrepresentation was due to systematic exclusion of Blacks in the jury selection process. Notwithstanding its length, and its forceful articulation of the importance of the right to trial by a jury drawn from a representative cross-section, with which we agree entirely, the sole substantive area of disagreement between Justice Broussard and ourselves is the nature of the systematic exclusion that a defendant must demonstrate to establish a prima facie violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community. Unlike Justice Broussard we do not understand the United States Supreme Court to have created such a minimal burden that a defendant need demonstrate only that underrepresentation has occurred over a period of time, upon which the court must presume that a constitutional defect is inherent in the system unless the People rebut the presumption. Rather, we conclude, that when a county's jury selection criteria are neutral with respect to race, ethnicity, sex, and religion, more is required to shift the burden to the People. The defendant must identify some aspect of the manner in which those criteria are being applied that is: (1) the probable cause of the disparity, and (2) constitutionally impermissible. [9] (3a) The Sixth Amendment guaranty of jury trial encompasses the right in issue here  a right to trial by an impartial jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community. [10] In two prior cases this court considered the manner in which procedures for compiling master jury lists and for selecting the trial jury might impermissibly impinge on that right. ( People v. Harris, supra, 36 Cal.3d 36 [composition of the master list]; People v. Wheeler, supra, 22 Cal.3d 258 [use of peremptory challenges].) Our focus in this case is on the intermediate stage of jury selection; the composition of panels from the master list for assignment to courtrooms in which a trial jury will be selected. If a defendant establishes a prima facie violation of the fair cross-section right guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment at this stage of jury selection, the burden shifts to the People to rebut the showing made by the defendant. (4a) In Duren v. Missouri, supra, 439 U.S. 357, the United States Supreme Court defined the elements of that prima facie showing, creating a three-prong test: In order to establish a prima facie violation of the fair cross-section requirement, the defendant must show (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a `distinctive' group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury selection process. ( Id. at p. 364 [58 L.Ed.2d at pp. 586-587].) (1b) As we have noted, a defendant need not show that the particular panel or panels assigned to the court in which his jury is to be selected are underrepresentative. ( Ballard v. United States, supra, 329 U.S. 187, 195; Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., supra, 328 U.S. 217, 225.) Indeed, in many cases, particularly lengthy capital prosecutions, several panels are assigned to a courtroom during the selection of the trial jury, and those panels in turn may have been selected from several weekly venires. [11] As the Supreme Court explained in Duren, the defendant's burden is to show that the representation of [the] group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of persons in the community; ... ( Duren v. Missouri, supra, 439 U.S. at p. 364 [58 L.Ed.2d at p. 587], italics added; see also Bradley v. Judges (9th Cir.1976) 531 F.2d 413, 415, fn. 3; Rabinowitz v. United States (5th Cir.1966) 366 F.2d 34, 59; Rubio v. Superior Court (1979) 24 Cal.3d 93, 108, fn. 10 [154 Cal. Rptr. 734, 593 P.2d 595], dis. opn. of Tobriner, J.; Montez v. Superior Court (1970) 10 Cal. App.3d 343, 348-349 [88 Cal. Rptr. 736].) (5a) That the first prong of Duren was established here is undisputed. Blacks are a cognizable group within the meaning of Duren. ( People v. Harris, supra, 36 Cal.3d 36, 51.) Only the adequacy of defendant's showing to meet the second and third prongs is in issue. (6a) (See fn. 12.) To satisfy the second prong a defendant must show that the number of members of the cognizable group is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of members in the relevant community  here Contra Costa County. [12] The evidence established that the normal Monday venire included between six and ten Blacks. Customarily 430 prospective jurors were summoned to appear on a Monday to make up the venire for the week. Although a larger number was summoned for the week in which defendant's jury was to be selected, the experience with regard to the percentage of Blacks and reasons for deferral was typical of venires over the past six months. Assuming therefore an average number of eight Black prospective jurors among the approximately two hundred forty-five persons placed on a weekly venire, [13] Blacks would constitute slightly over 3 percent of the prospective jurors on Contra Costa County venires at the time of defendant's trial. At that time Blacks comprised approximately 8 percent of the total population of the county. The absolute disparity reflected in these figures was thus 5 percent. It does not appear that a disparity of this degree renders the representation of Blacks on jury venires less than fair and reasonable in relation to their numbers in the general population of Contra Costa County. However, the Supreme Court has not yet spoken definitively on either the means by which disparity may be measured [14] or the constitutional limit of permissible disparity. [15] (2b) We need not attempt to resolve these uncertainties here, since we are satisfied that defendant has not made out a prima facie case under the third prong by showing that the disparity is caused by systematic exclusion of Blacks. Defendant did not contend that the master list was underrepresentative and offered no evidence to suggest that it may have been. Instead he focussed only on the weekly venires, but even here offered no evidence identifying the probable cause of the disparity. He speculates now that the allegedly informal manner in which hardship deferrals were granted to prospective jurors was a factor, [16] but he offered no evidence that Blacks sought or were granted deferral on grounds of hardship in greater relative numbers than members of other groups. His claim of systematic exclusion is based solely on a statistical showing of consistent underrepresentation. Defendant thus assumes that a prima facie case of systematic exclusion of the underrepresented group may be demonstrated by nothing more than an inference that a constitutional defect is inherent in the selection process. Justice Broussard also concludes that a statistical showing of this nature is adequate to meet the defendant's burden under the third prong of Duren. We disagree. Neither the Supreme Court's acceptance of statistical evidence that the underrepresentation in that case was not a chance occurrence, nor the court's statement that systematic disproportion itself demonstrates an infringement of the defendant's interest in a jury chosen from a fair community cross section (439 U.S. 357, 368, fn. 26 [58 L.Ed.2d 579, 589]), supports the proposition that in a Sixth Amendment representative cross-section challenge statistical evidence that disparity is not a chance occurrence is adequate to meet the defendant's burden in all situations. Were statistical evidence of recurring disparity alone adequate to establish a prima facie violation of the cross-section guaranty, the third prong of the Duren test would be surplusage. By including as an element of a prima facie case a demonstration that the disparity is caused by systematic exclusion of members of the underrepresented group, the Supreme Court clearly intended to require more. The context in which the quoted statement and the court's holding in Duran were made  that of a state in which the jury selection criteria being applied were not neutral  must be considered in understanding the meaning of systematic disproportion as the court used that phrase. The selection criteria which were in use in the State of Missouri when the Duren challenge was made permitted members of a cognizable class, women, to claim exemption from jury service. Thus, the defendant in that case met all three prongs of the test: (1) the class was cognizable, (2) it was underrepresented, and (3) a constitutionally impermissible basis for excusing those class members had been identified as the probable cause of the disparity. The statistical evidence tended to show the causal relationship between the disparity and the impermissible feature. The defendant thus made out a prima facie case as to the third prong by showing both of the elements we hold are required. Defendant in the case at bench did neither. The Supreme Court has noted in a recent decision, albeit in another context, that in positions requiring special qualifications gross statistical disparities have little probative value in establishing a prima facie pattern or practice of discrimination. In such cases it cannot be assumed that `that all citizens are fungible for purposes of determining whether members of a particular class have been unlawfully excluded.' ( City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989) 488 U.S. 469, ___ [102 L.Ed.2d 854, 887, 109 S.Ct. 706], quoting from Mayor v. Educational Equality League (1974) 415 U.S. 605, 620 [39 L.Ed.2d 630, 644, 94 S.Ct. 1323].) This observation would appear to apply with equal force to a jury selection system. Therefore, even were we to assume arguendo that the Contra Costa County master jury list itself was fairly representative of the adult, presumptively jury eligible, Black population of the county, we could find no basis in the statistical showing made by defendant, or in the evidence regarding the procedure and criteria for excusal or deferral the jury commissioner testified were in use, to establish a prima facie Sixth Amendment violation through systematic exclusion of Blacks from venires. Unlike the jury selection procedures in Duren and Taylor v. Louisiana (1975) 419 U.S. 522 [42 L.Ed.2d 690, 95 S.Ct. 692], the criteria for deferral or excusal applied in Contra Costa County did not single out any cognizable group. They were, and are, neutral with respect to race, ethnicity, religion, sex, etc. Defendant offered no evidence that those criteria were not applied evenhandedly without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, sex, or economic status. Nor do we accept the proposition inherent in defendant's claim that constitutionally impermissible systematic exclusion could be shown by demonstrating that underrepresentation of a cognizable class is the result of applying neutral criteria to grant deferrals on grounds of hardship. Defendant speculates, for example, that the disparity he proved exists because a large percentage of Black residents of Contra Costa County live in Richmond, have lower than average income, and lack ready transportation to the courthouse in Martinez. They qualified for hardship deferrals on that basis. No case holds, however, that disparity that results notwithstanding application of neutral and presumptively constitutionally permissible jury selection criteria is a product of systematic exclusion. (7a) The high court has not suggested that the state must create venires that reflect a representative cross-section of the population. The Sixth Amendment forbids the exclusion of members of a cognizable class of jurors, but it does not require that venires created by a neutral selection procedure be supplemented to achieve the goal of selection from a representative cross-section of the population. ( United States v. Cecil, supra, 836 F.2d 1431, 1447-1449.) (2c) We do not hold, however, as the dissenting opinion of Justice Broussard suggests, that if neutral procedures and criteria are used in the selection process, the impact of those procedures on the defendant's ability to select a jury from a representative cross-section is never relevant. That question is not before us since defendant failed to identify any criterion used in the jury selection process that was arguably impermissible or was applied in an impermissible manner, and while he speculated that hardship deferrals were involved he neither demonstrated that they caused the disparity nor established that the basis on which they were granted was constitutionally impermissible. Had defendant demonstrated that a disproportionate number of Blacks were deferred on grounds of hardship, and identified the aspect of the hardship criteria used to defer them, we would be called upon to determine whether the state has a sufficiently compelling interest in permitting prospective jurors to obtain deferrals on that basis to justify its impact on the composition of the venire. ( Duren v. Missouri, supra, 439 U.S. 357, 367-368 [58 L.Ed.2d 579, 588-589]; People v. Morales, supra, 48 Cal.3d 527, 548; People v. Harris, supra, 36 Cal.3d 36, 59.) In the absence of controlling authority, or compelling reason to conduct hearings and respond to challenges that are based solely on a statistical showing of disparity, however, we are satisfied that the then-existing procedures for jury challenges established by our Legislature (former §§ 1055 et seq.) comport with the teaching of Duren, and adequately protect a criminal defendant's right to a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the population. As the dissenting opinion of Justice Broussard notes, the jury selection procedures used in Contra Costa County at the time of defendant's trial did not comply in all respects with the statutes then in effect. Defendant did not base his challenge to the venire on any departure from state statutory procedure, however, and does not now argue that any departure from that procedure affected the composition of the jury. He relies only on the assertion that the trial court erred in rejecting his Sixth Amendment based challenge. Because he failed to establish a prima facie case of systematic exclusion of a cognizable class in the jury selection process, the trial court properly denied his challenge.