Opinion ID: 509516
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: death qualification of the jury

Text: 83 The state trial judge removed for cause, over Harris' objections, prospective jurors who stated that they could not under any circumstances vote for the imposition of the death penalty pursuant to Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968). Harris contends that the death-qualification of the jury by removal for cause of the Witherspoon -excludables violated his rights under the sixth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution because (1) the resulting jury is prone to convict, (2) it does not constitute a neutral or reliable tribunal, and (3) it does not represent a fair cross-section of the community. The district court rejected this claim and denied Harris an evidentiary hearing on this issue. 4 We initially address the State's assertion that Harris abused the writ under Rule 9(b).
84 The State contends the district court abused its discretion in denying its request to dismiss Harris' death qualification claim under Rule 9(b) because (1) this argument was raised and rejected in his first federal petition, and (2) assuming this argument is new, there is no reason for it not to have been presented in the first petition. Rule 9(b) bars successive petitions where new grounds are alleged and the court finds that failure to assert these arguments in the earlier petition constitutes an abuse of the writ. 85 Rule 9(b) does not define the phrase abuse of the writ. However, the legislative history of Rule 9(b) indicates that Congress intended to codify the principles governing abuse of the writ set forth in the leading case of Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963). H.R.Rep. No. 1471, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. at 5-6, reprinted in 1976 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 2478, 2482 (quoting Sanders, 373 U.S. at 17, 83 S.Ct. at 1078). Thus, we must look to Sanders to determine what constitutes an abuse of the writ. Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 521, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1204, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982) (plurality opinion of O'Connor, J.) (Rule 9(b) incorporates the judge-made principle governing the abuse of the writ test set forth in Sanders ); id. at 534, 102 S.Ct. at 1211 (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (interpretation of Rule 9(b) necessarily entails an accurate interpretation of the Sanders standard). 86 The Court in Sanders discussed the abuse of the writ doctrine as follows: 87 if a prisoner deliberately withholds one of two grounds for federal collateral relief at the time of filing his first application, in the hope of being granted two hearings rather than one or for some other such reason, he may be deemed to have waived his right to a hearing on a second application presenting the withheld ground.... Nothing in the traditions of habeas corpus requires the federal courts to tolerate needless piecemeal litigation, or to entertain collateral proceedings whose only purpose is to vex, harass, or delay. 88 373 U.S. at 18, 83 S.Ct. at 1078 (emphasis added); Richmond v. Ricketts, 774 F.2d 957, 961 (9th Cir.1985). The proper inquiry then in determining whether a habeas petitioner has abused the writ by failing to raise a claim in a prior habeas petition is whether he withheld it without legal excuse. Jones v. Estelle, 722 F.2d 159, 163 (5th Cir.1983) (en banc), cert. denied sub nom. Jones v. McKaskle, 466 U.S. 976, 104 S.Ct. 2356, 80 L.Ed.2d 829 (1984). Legal excuse is demonstrated when, for example, new facts have arisen since the prior petition which were not reasonably ascertainable at the time of the filing of the earlier petition, or the law has changed in some substantive manner in the interim. Id. at 165, 169. 89 In rejecting the State's Rule 9(b) claim, the district court stated: 90 Harris' contention that death qualified juries do not represent a fair cross section of the community was presented in his first petition and rejected by this court. Petition I, 82-0249 at 93-95. The other two prongs of the death qualification argument were not exhausted at the state level when Harris filed his first petition in March 1982. Harris risked dismissal of his entire petition had he included unexhausted claims with exhausted arguments. Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982); Powell v. Spalding, 679 F.2d 163, 166, n. 2 (9th Cir.1982). 91 We review de novo whether a claim was exhausted in state court. Kim v. Villalobos, 799 F.2d 1317, 1320 (9th Cir.1986). A state prisoner seeking federal habeas corpus review of his conviction ordinarily must first exhaust available state remedies. Id. at 1319; 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254(b), (c). 92 Our independent review of the record reveals the district court's conclusion is not supported by the record. Harris had exhausted his state remedies as to all three prongs of his death qualification argument when the California Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus on October 10, 1980, prior to the filing of his federal petition on March 5, 1982. Harris' state petition raised all three prongs: 93 The excusal for cause of jurors who, while unalterably opposed to the imposition of the death penalty, can nevertheless fairly determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant, denied petitioner a fair trial by an impartial jury on the issues of his guilt or innocence, the degree of his offense if guilty, and the truth or untruth of the special circumstances alleged. The process of excluding prospective jurors for cause based on opposition to the death penalty (i.e., death qualification) in a situation where, as here, a single jury heard both the guilt and penalty phases of petitioner's bifurcated trial renders that jury impermissibly prosecution-prone, more likely to convict than a jury which is properly representative of a cross-section of the community and incapable of functioning as an impartial and effective safeguard of petitioner's rights guaranteed by state and federal constitutional provisions. 94 Thus, Harris' claim that he had not exhausted state post conviction proceedings on this issue is without merit. 95 Alternatively, Harris asserts that he did not abuse the writ under Rule (b) because he has acquired newly developed scientific evidence on the death qualification issue which was not available when he filed his first federal petition. This argument is supported by the record. 96 In Harris' first state petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed concurrently with his automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court, Harris incorporated the statistical evidence proffered in Hovey v. Superior Court, 28 Cal.3d 1, 616 P.2d 1301, 168 Cal.Rptr. 128 (1980), a capital case then pending in the California Supreme Court, with his death qualification claim. One of the reasons the California Supreme Court rejected Harris' death qualification claim was that the statistical evidence he relied upon did not take into consider[ation] the differences between a 'Witherspoon -qualified' jury and a 'California death-qualified' jury. Hovey, 28 Cal.3d at 69, 616 P.2d at 1346, 168 Cal.Rptr. at 174; see Harris, 28 Cal.3d at 960, 623 P.2d at 253, 171 Cal.Rptr. at 692-93 (Harris' death qualification claim was based on Hovey ). Harris explains that after he filed his first federal petition on March 5, 1982, his attorney McCabe became aware of new statistical evidence presented in the capital case People v. Word and Sparks, S.F. No. 14376, on this issue. Harris asserts that the newly developed scientific evidence presented during the Word and Sparks proceedings takes into consideration the California death-qualified jury. The State has not offered evidence that this material was not newly developed. Because of Harris' showing that he has discovered evidence not reasonably ascertainable at the time of his first federal petition, the district court did not abuse its discretion in rejecting the State's Rule 9(b) abuse of the writ claim. 97
98 In Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. 162, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 90 L.Ed.2d 137 (1986), the Supreme Court held that the United States Constitution does not prohibit the removal for cause, prior to the guilt phase of a bifurcated capital trial, of prospective jurors whose opposition to the death penalty is so strong that it would prevent or substantially impair the performance of their duties as jurors at the sentencing phase of the trial. Id. at 165, 106 S.Ct. at 1760. The Court rejected the defendant's contention that death qualification of the jury violated his right under the sixth and fourteenth amendments to an impartial jury selected from a representative cross section of the community. Id. at 173-77, 183-84, 106 S.Ct. at 1764-67, 1769-70. Harris has advanced many of the same arguments the Supreme Court expressly rejected in McCree. 99 As the Supreme Court recently noted, [t]here is no reason to revisit the issue whether social-science literature conclusively shows that 'death-qualified' juries are 'conviction-prone.'  Buchanan v. Kentucky, 483 U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 2906, 2913 n. 16, 97 L.Ed.2d 336 (1987). Just as it was assumed in McCree and Buchanan that the studies presented in those cases were both methodologically valid and adequate to establish that 'death qualification' in fact produces juries somewhat more 'conviction-prone' than 'non-death-qualified' juries, McCree, 476 U.S. at 173, 106 S.Ct. at 1764; Buchanan, 107 S.Ct. at 2913 n. 16, we make a similar assumption here concerning similar studies presented by Harris. 100 The Supreme Court's reasoning in McCree requires rejection of Harris' contention that death qualification violated his right to a jury selected from a representative cross-section of the community. The fair cross-section requirement does not apply to petit juries. The fair cross-section rule is limited to the method of summoning the venire panel from which the petit jury is selected. McCree, 476 U.S. at 173-74, 106 S.Ct. at 1764-65. No violation of the sixth amendment's fair cross-section requirement has been shown in this matter. 101 The analysis in McCree also forecloses Harris' claim that the removal of Witherspoon -excludables resulted in the selection of a conviction-prone jury. The Court in McCree stated that even though  'death qualification' in fact produces juries somewhat more 'conviction prone' than 'nondeath-qualified' juries.... the Constitution does not prohibit the States from 'death qualifying' juries in capital cases. 476 U.S. at 173, 106 S.Ct. at 1764. 102 Harris finally claims that death qualification denied him a jury capable of fulfilling functions contemplated by the right to a jury trial. Harris asserts that death qualification results in a jury which is less likely to overcome the biases of its members or to arrive at an accurate and objective result through the counterbalancing of the prejudices and proclivities of individual jurors. This argument is merely a restatement of Harris' fair cross-section argument. Accord Smith v. Balkcom, 660 F.2d 573, 584 & n. 29 (5th Cir. Unit B 1981) (defendant's claim that death qualification denies him his right to a properly functioning jury is simply another way of claiming that the jury which convicted him was not fairly representative of the community), modified, 671 F.2d 858 (5th Cir.1982) (per curiam). 103