Opinion ID: 1868744
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Trial Court Properly Rejected Rodgers's Fair Cross Section Challenge.

Text: Rodgers next contends that his jury was not selected from a fair cross section of the community. The fifty-person venire from which Rodgers's jury was selected apparently included only three African-Americans. Eddings and Rodgers both called the trial court's attention to this fact, argued that the panel thus did not represent the community, and moved that a new panel be called. The trial court denied the motion. Rodgers contends that the trial court erred and notes that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution entitle him to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. Duren v. State of Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 359, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979) (citing Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975)). To establish a prima facie violation of this right, however, Rodgers was obliged to 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 364, 99 S.Ct. 664. It is not enough to allege merely that a particular jury or a particular venire failed to mirror the community, for, as the Supreme Court has explained, [defendants are not entitled to a jury of any particular composition, ... but the jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community and thereby fail to be reasonably representative thereof. Taylor, 419 U.S. at 538, 95 S.Ct. 692 (citations omitted). Rodgers's motion did not meet this standard. Although African-Americans do indeed constitute a distinctive group for jury selection purposes, Rodgers made no attempt to show that they are regularly underrepresented on Jefferson County venires or that the jury selection process systematically excludes them. Absent these showings, the trial court did not err when it rejected Rodgers's objection to the venire.