Opinion ID: 70433
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The meaning of community

Text: 18 In this Circuit's prior cases, we have not had occasion to define the meaning of community in the context of challenges to federal jury selection systems. The prior cases simply called for a comparison between the racial composition of the community from which the district court drew the jury wheel and the racial composition of the jury wheel. See, e.g., Pepe, 747 F.2d at 649; Gibson v. Zant, 705 F.2d 1543, 1547 (11th Cir.1983). We must, therefore, decide for the first time what geographical parameters the fair cross-section requirement, which is implicit in the Sixth Amendment, imposes on the selection of jurors. 19 The geographical parameters of the source of the jury is not a subject about which the Sixth Amendment is silent. The Sixth Amendment provides that criminal defendants are entitled to trial by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law. (emphasis added). This provision of the Sixth Amendment is known as the vicinage provision. At common law, a criminal defendant was entitled to a jury drawn from the locality of the crime, usually an English county. See Drew L. Kershen, Vicinage, 29 Okla.L.Rev. 801, 813-16 (1976). In considering amendments to the Constitution, Congress debated whether to provide a guarantee to federal criminal defendants regarding vicinage. Those in favor of a vicinage provision sought narrow territorial limits akin to those existing at common law. Id. at 816-44. The text of the Sixth Amendment represents a compromise: a constraint on the source of the jury was constitutionalized, but the size of the vicinage was left to Congressional determination. See Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 96, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 1903-04, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970). As this Court has previously observed, [i]t was apparently understood that the districts mentioned in the amendment would be defined by Congress in the Judiciary Act, which was pending while the amendments were being debated. United States v. Louwsma, 970 F.2d 797, 801 (11th Cir.1992), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 1383, 122 L.Ed.2d 759 (1993). Thus, neither the language of the vicinage provision nor its legislative history suggests that the geographical area from which the jury is summoned must be smaller than the judicial district created by Congress. 20 Furthermore, binding precedent interpreting the vicinage provision makes it clear that the Sixth Amendment provides Congress and the courts flexibility in selecting the source of the jury pool. For example, the United States Supreme Court has held that the Sixth Amendment does not require that the jury drawn be from the whole district. Ruthenberg v. United States, 245 U.S. 480, 482, 38 S.Ct. 168, 169, 62 L.Ed. 414 (1918) (the plain language of the Sixth Amendment is satisfied by a jury drawn from a geographical subdivision of a judicial district). Additionally, as interpreted by the former Fifth Circuit, the vicinage provision does not require that any jurors reside in the immediate vicinity of the occurrence of the crime. See United States v. James, 528 F.2d 999, 1021 (5th Cir.) (the Sixth Amendment does not entitle a criminal defendant to trial in the division where the crime was committed even though the division in which the trial is conducted selects its juries only from division-based voting lists), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 959, 97 S.Ct. 382, 50 L.Ed.2d 326 (1976). See also United States v. Grayson, 416 F.2d 1073, 1076 (5th Cir.1969) (no right to be indicted in the division where the offense occurred), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 1059, 90 S.Ct. 754, 24 L.Ed.2d 753 (1970). Thus, on the basis of the text of the vicinage provision, its legislative history, and the caselaw interpreting it, we conclude that district-based jury selection comports with the vicinage provision of the Sixth Amendment. 21 Grisham's contention to the contrary is somewhat extraordinary. He suggests that the fair cross-section requirement mandates that we graft onto the Sixth Amendment a more restrictive definition of community than the definition that is expressly provided in the Sixth Amendment itself. We disagree. 22 As noted above, the fair cross-section requirement is a means of ensuring that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of an impartial jury is met. Holland, 493 U.S. at 480, 110 S.Ct. at 807. A representative jury pool serves this goal because a diversity of viewpoints among the jury pool hedges against the possibility of a jury acting on prejudices shared by a homogenous group. Id. Understanding community for the purposes of a federal criminal defendant's fair cross-section claim to be the same as the parameters set forth in the Sixth Amendment's vicinage provision is consistent with the goal of impartiality. The QJWs in the Northern District include the full range of racial, social, and economic diversity in the region. So long as the lines of the geographical area from which the jury wheel is compiled are not drawn for the purpose of racial gerrymandering, see United States v. Cannady, 54 F.3d 544 (9th Cir.1995) (use of division-based jury wheels is proper absent evidence of gerrymandering), selecting juries at random from a predetermined geographical area provides a sufficiently diverse jury pool to ensure impartiality. 23 Impartiality may, in fact, be better served by juries drawn from areas not in close proximity to the crime. One of James Madison's principal arguments against incorporating a common law vicinage requirement was that the sympathy of local citizens with the perpetrator of an offense against the federal government would render successful prosecution impossible. See Kershen supra at 841 (discussing Madison's view). We need look no further than local prosecutions during the civil rights movement to witness Madison's acuity. Moreover, local prejudice may be aimed at the defendant instead of the government, as, for example, where the locality seeks retribution for an injury suffered by a popular victim. Accordingly, we hold that the Sixth Amendment does not entitle a federal criminal defendant to a jury summoned from a fair cross-section of the community immediately surrounding the place of the crime, but merely to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of some previously defined geographical area within the boundaries of the judicial district in which the offense occurred.2. Congressional designation of divisions 24 Grisham next contends that the creation of judicial divisions in the Northern District signals Congress' intention that juries be selected on the basis of those divisions. 6 As we noted above, the Sixth Amendment gives Congress the power to determine the area of the vicinage district under the Sixth Amendment. Thus, Congress could create a system whereby statutes refer to districts for certain purposes, such as jurisdiction and venue, and, at the same time, mark off distinct geographical areas for the purpose of creating Sixth Amendment vicinage districts. 25 Nonetheless, we reject Grisham's contention that Congress' creation of judicial divisions was an exercise of this Sixth Amendment power. First, it is significant that Congress did not express such an intention in the most obvious manner available to it, namely, by using the term district. Second, neither the statute creating the statutory divisions of the Northern District nor the Act expressly dictates a division-based vicinage requirement. 7 The Act does not stipulate which political subdivision within a district the federal courts should select, committing that decision to the courts' discretion. 28 U.S.C.A. Sec. 1861; 28 U.S.C.A. Sec. 1863(b)(2) ( [A] jury selection plan shall specify whether the names of prospective jurors shall be selected from the voter registrations lists or the lists of actual voters of the political subdivisions within the district or division.) (emphasis added). Third, Grisham has failed to point to any legislative history which supports his contention that Congress intended to require division-based jury selection. Thus, we conclude that, in creating divisions within the Northern District, Congress did not exercise its power to define the geographical limits from which a federal jury may be drawn. See Clement v. United States, 149 F. 305, 309-10 (8th Cir.1906) (ruling that divisions are not districts under the Sixth Amendment), cert. denied, 206 U.S. 562, 27 S.Ct. 795, 51 L.Ed. 1189 (1907). 26 Accordingly, the district court did not err in concluding that, in this case, the relevant statistical community was the Northern District rather than the Southern Division and, thus, properly rejected Grisham's Sixth Amendment claim.