Opinion ID: 2600745
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Due Process and Right to a Fair and Impartial Jury

Text: Mara contends that the court's procedure for selecting potential jurors violated his rights to due process and an impartial jury. Mara suggests that the potential jurors assigned by the court to other trials were the type of people who would tend to keep up with current events or who may have attained higher levels of education or be of a certain gender. Thus, Mara contends that the jury who tried his case did not represent a random cross section of the community. The selection of a jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the right to an impartial jury guaranteed by the sixth amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 14 of the Hawai`i Constitution. See State v. Richie, 88 Hawai`i 19, 41, 960 P.2d 1227, 1249 (1998); see also State v. Garrison, 10 Haw.App. 1, 12, 860 P.2d 610, 616, cert. denied, 75 Haw. 581, 863 P.2d 989 (1993). In Richie, this court outlined the requirements needed to establish a prima facie violation of the impartial jury requirement of the United States and Hawai`i Constitutions: 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. Richie, 88 Hawai`i at 41, 960 P.2d at 1249 (quoting Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979)). Applying this rationale to the selection of the jury venire, Mara has not asserted or shown that a distinctive group was underrepresented in the pool of 100 potential jurors initially selected in this case. Other than suggesting that the persons reassigned to other courtrooms might be more educated or read more than the persons assigned to his case, or might be more likely to be of one gender than another, Mara offers nothing concerning any potentially relevant characteristic of any of the persons who were assigned to the jury venire in his case versus those assigned to venires of the other cases. Therefore, Mara has not sufficiently alleged or proven the necessary requirements to establish even a threshold showing of a violation of his right to an impartial jury. Accordingly, we hold that Mara's rights to due process and an impartial jury were not violated.