Opinion ID: 2755588
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Fair Cross-Section Claim

Text: Cheadle filed a pre-trial motion in which he sought an opportunity for discovery on jury selection procedures, arguing that the District’s jury selection process “systematically excludes and underrepresents African Americans in violation of both the United States Constitution and the District of Columbia Jury System Act.” The trial court denied the motion, a ruling that both appellants challenged in their opening briefs on appeal. The government conceded in its brief that the trial court’s summary denial of the motion was improper in light of this court’s opinion in Gause v. United States, 6 A.3d 1247 (D.C. 2010) (en banc), and 8 agreed that the case should be remanded for the court to consider the scope of discovery to which appellants were entitled. Accordingly, in November 2012, we remanded the cases to the Superior Court with instructions to “consider and decide the scope of any discovery on jury-selection methods to which appellants are entitled, and . . . [to] entertain any motion appellant(s) may bring challenging the jury selection procedure used in connection with the trial[.]” While the cases were on remand, and pursuant to the discovery motion, appellants received from the Superior Court Juror Office a spreadsheet containing self-reported race data for 344,241 potential jurors to whom summonses were sent between October 2008 and May 2010. Appellants also had the opportunity to interview Superior Court Juror Officer Suzanne Bailey-Jones. Thereafter, relying on an analysis by Howard University Professor of Economics Dr. Richard Seltzer, Cheadle moved for a new trial,2 alleging that the jury-selection procedure used for his trial violated the Sixth Amendment and the Jury System Act because African Americans were underrepresented in jury venires at the time his petit jury was 2 Although only Cheadle moved for a new trial, we granted Israel’s request to join Cheadle’s briefs on appeal. We therefore treat the fair cross-section claim as having been raised by both appellants. 9 selected in 2009. In opposing the motion, the government relied on an analysis by statistician Dr. Bernard Siskin. The experts proposed two benchmarks as points of comparison with the Juror Office data: (1) Figures from the 2010 Census (adjusted to exclude individuals under age eighteen), from which Dr. Seltzer estimated that African Americans comprised slightly more than 47.6 percent of the District’s adult population in 2010 and Dr. Siskin estimated that the same group made up 48.89 percent of the District’s adult population in that year; and (2) data from the 20052009 American Community Survey (an ongoing statistical survey prepared by the Census Bureau that gathers and publishes population information for non-census years), from which the experts estimated that 50.9 percent of the District’s adult population was African American in 2009.3 3 The experts’ reports do not discuss whether, as suggested in a law review article on which appellants’ rely, a more appropriate “baseline for assessing demographic representation in the jury pool . . . is the jury-eligible population [which typically excludes, e.g., individuals who have felony convictions] rather than the total population.” Paula Hannaford-Agor, Systematic Negligence in Jury Operations: Why the Definition of Systematic Exclusion in Fair Cross Section Claims Must be Expanded, 59 DRAKE L. REV. 761, 786 (2011). 10 Dr. Seltzer’s analysis of the Juror Office data focused on the percentage of African Americans among the qualified potential jurors who actually reported for service (“the venires”).4 Dr. Seltzer found that, during the weeks between October 1, 2008 and February 2, 20095 — i.e., the weeks leading up to appellants’ trial — an average of 37.3 percent of the qualified jurors who reported for duty were African American. Dr. Seltzer further found that, on the two days on which appellants’ trial jury was selected — February 2 and 3, 2009 — 37.4 percent of the qualified jurors who reported for any venire were African American, and that, of the 128 jurors who made up the venires from which appellant’s petit jury was selected, 38.6 percent were African American. When these statistics are compared to the 47.6 and 50.9 percent benchmarks Dr. Seltzer described, they suggest that African Americans were underrepresented among qualified jurors who reported for duty. Stated differently, Dr. Seltzer’s data suggest that during the four months 4 Except where noted, our references in the description that follows are to findings that reflect (1) the experts’ use of a technique called “geocoding,” which entails using zip codes to impute the races of venire persons who declined to selfreport their race, and (2) a process whereby venire persons who were identified as “Hispanic” in Juror Office records were apportioned among other racial groups according to the percentages at which individuals who identified themselves as of Hispanic origin in the Census data identified themselves as belonging to those racial groups. 5 These were the only weeks for the time period before appellants’ trial for which data were provided. 11 immediately preceding February 2009, African Americans were underrepresented on the venires by over 10 percentage points (and by as much as 15.6 percentage points based on use of Dr. Seltzer’s non-geocoding-adjusted estimate that only 35.3 percent of qualified reporting jurors during this period were African American).6 Dr. Siskin focused his analysis on the percentage of African Americans among individuals who were on the Master Jury Wheel (i.e., the list from which the Juror Office draws prospective jurors) and were sent summonses during the period covered by the Juror Office data. He found that African Americans constituted 53.4 percent of the 344,241 prospective jurors who were sent a summons between October 1, 2008, and May 27, 2010, and 50.2 percent of the 63,044 potential jurors who were sent a summons during the four-month period before appellants’ trial, i.e., the period from October 1, 2008, to January 31, 2009. When these statistics are compared to the 48.89 percent and 50.9 percent benchmarks Dr. Siskin described, they suggest that African Americans may have been overrepresented, by between 2.5 and 4.5 percentage points, among those sent 6 Dr. Seltzer’s findings indicate that during the full twenty-month period covered by the Juror Office data, African Americans were underrepresented among qualified jurors who reported for duty by at least 8.4 percentage points and by as much as 12.9 percentage points. 12 summonses between October 1, 2008, and May 27, 2010, but may have been underrepresented, by as much as 1 percentage point, among those sent summonses during the four months preceding February 2009. Dr. Siskin also calculated the representation of African Americans among the qualified jurors who reported for service, finding that, over the four-month period preceding February 2009, 37.5 percent of the qualified venirepersons who reported and were not selected as jurors — and 40 percent of those who were selected as jurors — were African American. He further found that over the full twenty-month period covered by the Juror Office data, 39.3 percent of the qualified venirepersons who reported and were not selected as jurors — and 41.7 percent of those who were selected as jurors — were African American. Compared to the 48.89 percent benchmark, the twenty-month data indicate underrepresentation by less than ten percentage points.7 In his November 2013 Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law on Remand, Judge Weisberg rejected appellants’ fair cross-section challenge, concluding that appellants had failed to show “that African Americans are 7 Dr. Siskin also found that African Americans made up between 50 and 60 percent of appellants’ actual trial jury (depending on whether geocoding is applied to impute the races of the four jurors who did not report their race). 13 underrepresented on the Master Jury Wheel relative to their number in the population at-large” and also did not show “that their claimed underrepresentation either on the Master Jury Wheel or in the pool of those who report[ed] for service is caused by systematic exclusion.” Agreeing with the government that the relevant focus of analysis was not the representation of African Americans in the venires of prospective jurors who reported for service, but rather their representation on the Master Jury Wheel, Judge Weisberg first found that Cheadle had shown a non-existent or no more than de minimis — thus constitutionally insignificant — underrepresentation of African Americans on the Master Jury Wheel. Further, citing Dr. Siskin’s finding that the alleged underrepresentation of African Americans in the pool of jurors who reported for service “dropped below 10% when [Dr. Siskin] looked at the entire twenty-month period for which data were available[,]” Judge Weisberg found it likely that the underrepresentation “was less than 10%, which most courts would consider undesirable, but not of constitutional significance.”8 He also found that, even accepting Cheadle’s focus on the venires during the four-month period leading up to appellants’ trial, Cheadle 8 See, e.g., United States v. Rodriguez, 776 F.2d 1509, 1511 (11th Cir. 1985) (“this circuit has consistently found that a prima facie case of underrepresentation has not been made where the absolute disparity . . . does not exceed ten percent.”); see generally Hannaford-Agor, supra note 3, at 767-68 (“Most courts that have adopted absolute disparity as the primary measure of underrepresentation have ruled that absolute disparities less than 10% are insufficient as a matter of law to demonstrate a violation of the fair cross section requirement.”). 14 failed to show that any underrepresentation that did exist was the result of systematic exclusion of African Americans by the court rather than the result of “race-neutral economic and socioeconomic factors[.]” Appellants argue that Judge Weisberg erred in accepting the government’s argument that the relevant focus for measuring proportionate representation was the Master Jury Wheel rather than the venires from which petit juries were selected, and also erred by reasoning that the Superior Court’s failure to take affirmative steps to remedy the underrepresentation of African Americans on the venires did not constitute “systematic exclusion” within the meaning of Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357 (1979).9 Our review is de novo.10 9 Appellants also argue that Judge Weisberg erred by relying on data drawn in part from the sixteen months that followed the selection of appellants’ trial jury. We need not address this contention at any length because, as discussed infra, our disposition of the fair cross-section claim is based on appellants’ failure to show systematic exclusion of African Americans in the jury-selection process rather than on differences between what the data show for the four-month pre-trial period and for the longer period covered by the Juror Office data. We do note, however, that at least in some circumstances, looking to data for a longer rather than a shorter time period may assist a defendant in demonstrating systematic exclusion. See, e.g., Duren, 439 U.S. at 366 (petitioner’s “undisputed demonstration that a large discrepancy occurred not just occasionally, but in every weekly venire for a period of nearly a year manifestly indicates that the cause of the underrepresentation was systematic—that is, inherent in the particular jury-selection process utilized”). Appellants also make a passing assertion on appeal, as they did in their trial motion, that the District’s jury-selection practices violate the Jury System Act, (continued…) 15 The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes the fair crosssection requirement: It guarantees criminal defendants the “right to be tried by an impartial jury drawn from sources reflecting a fair cross section of the community.” Berghuis v. Smith, 559 U.S. 314, 319 (2010) (citing Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975)). A defendant who alleges a violation of the Sixth Amendment’s fair cross-section requirement bears the burden of showing: (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a “distinctive” group in the community; (2) that the representation of (…continued) D.C. Code § 11-1901 to 1918 (2012 Repl.) (“the Act”), which provides that “[a]ll litigants entitled to trial by jury shall have the right to grand and petit juries selected at random from a fair cross section of the residents of the District of Columbia.” D.C. Code § 11-1901. Our case law establishes that “[t]he focal point for deciding whether [a jury-selection] system substantially complies with the requirements of the Act . . . is . . . the original source list from which names are selected for potential service.” Obregon v. United States, 423 A.2d 200, 208-09 (D.C. 1980). Because appellants have failed to present any evidence regarding exclusion of African Americans from the lists used to compile the Master Jury Wheel, and because they have otherwise not explained their argument regarding the Act, we treat the argument as abandoned. See Bardoff v. United States, 628 A.2d 86, 90 n.8 (D.C. 1993) (“questions raised but not argued in briefing are treated as abandoned” (citing Cratty v. United States, 163 F.2d 844, 851 (D.C. Cir. 1947)). 10 See United States v. Orange, 447 F.3d 792, 797 (10th Cir. 2006) (explaining that a trial court’s factual determinations relevant to a fair cross-section claim are reviewed for clear error while its legal determination of whether a prima facie violation of the fair cross section requirement has been shown is reviewed de novo). 16 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. Duren, 439 U.S. at 364. “The fair-cross-section principle must have much leeway in application[,]” Berghuis, 559 U.S. at 321 (quoting Taylor, 419 U.S. at 537-38), and “neither Duren nor any other decision of th[e] Court specifies the method or test courts must use to measure the representation of distinctive groups in jury pools[.]” Id. at 331; see also United States v. Rioux, 97 F.3d 648, 657 (2d Cir. 1996) (“The relevant jury pool may be defined by: (1) the master list; (2) the qualified wheel; (3) the venires; or (4) a combination of the three. The time period may be defined as: (1) the day the district selected Rioux’s jury pool; or (2) some broader timeframe, perhaps over the life of the wheel.”). We think it plain, however, that a showing of constitutionally significant underrepresentation of a distinct group in either the Master Jury Wheel or the venires that were composed during a certain period can satisfy the second Duren prong. Further, a juryselection mechanism that systematically operates to exclude a distinctive group from venires that are drawn from a representative master jury wheel would violate the Sixth Amendment guarantee no less than a system under which a distinctive group is systematically excluded from the master jury wheel. See Taylor, 419 U.S. at 538 (“[T]he jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries 17 are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community”). Therefore, it would have been error for Judge Weisberg to end his analysis upon concluding that African Americans were adequately represented on the Master Jury Wheel during the time period involved here. Judge Weisberg did not end his analysis there, however; instead, he went on to consider the data showing an underrepresentation of African Americans among the jury venires during the four-month period before appellants’ trial and information about the jury-selection system. For the reasons that follow, we discern no error in his conclusion that Cheadle failed to show that the underrepresentation was due to systematic exclusion of African Americans in the jury-selection process. In addition to submitting to the court Dr. Seltzer’s analysis of Juror Office data, Cheadle submitted a copy of the District’s Jury Plan and information from the interview of Juror Officer Bailey-Jones. On the basis of those sources, he informed the court that when a prospective juror responds to a summons but fails to appear for duty, the Juror Office undertakes a series of measures designed to result in the prospective juror’s service: First, the Juror Office sends a letter notifying the potential juror that he or she has missed the scheduled service and 18 prompting him or her to schedule another date to serve. If there is no response, the Juror Office sends a notice requiring the juror to appear and to “show cause” for the failure to report; and, if there is still no response, a bench warrant is issued and a criminal case is initiated against the absentee juror, who is typically assessed a fine of $25. In the case of a potential juror whose summons is returned as undeliverable, or a potential juror who both fails to return the summons and fails to appear for service, the Juror Office’s practice is to take no further action, reasoning, in the words of Juror Officer Bailey-Jones, “[w]hy send good mail after bad?” The expert reports that were before the court indicated that African Americans were overrepresented among those whose summonses were returned to the Juror Office as undeliverable, as well as among those who failed to respond to a summons for an unknown reason.11 Appellants argued that evidence regarding the Juror Office’s failure to take corrective action in response to the 11 Dr. Seltzer found that African Americans constituted 58.9 percent of the potential jurors who did not respond to a summons for an unknown reason, and 49.1 percent of the potential jurors whose summonses were returned to the Juror Office as undeliverable. Using a geocoding methodology different from the one Dr. Seltzer employed, Dr. Siskin found that 64 percent of those who failed to respond to a summons for an unknown reason during this period were African American and that 52.2 percent of summonses that were returned as undeliverable over this period had been sent to African Americans. 19 disproportionately high rate at which African Americans failed to respond to jury summonses supported a conclusion that the underrepresentation of African Americans was “due to systemic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.” In rejecting that argument, Judge Weisberg reasoned that “[t]he court can control to whom it sends jury summonses, but it cannot control who responds.” As we have explained, “a statistical showing alone, without some analysis of the particular system involved, is [in]sufficient to prove systematic exclusion.” Diggs v. United States, 906 A.2d 290, 297-98 (D.C. 2006) (quoting Obregon, 423 A.2d at 206) (rejecting argument that the third Duren prong was satisfied “by merely showing that a high comparative disparity existed over a long period of time and that the underrepresentation probably did not happen by chance”). Although both parties presented statistical documentation of the less-thansatisfactory representation of African Americans on jury venires over the period studied, no evidence was presented to show that this was the result of any policy or practice that could be deemed to constitute systematic exclusion of African Americans from jury service within the meaning of Duren (or, analogous to the facts of Duren,12 a system-sanctioned opportunity for African Americans to 12 In Duren, the Supreme Court considered Missouri procedures that allowed women to remove their names from the master jury wheel and to opt out (continued…) 20 exclude themselves from jury service).13 The underrepresentation of African Americans appears to be attributable to external factors — undeliverable mail or the choices of individual prospective jurors not to respond to their summonses or not to appear for service — not to systematic exclusion existing in the juryselection process. Cf. Orange, 447 F.3d at 800 (“Discrepancies resulting from the private choices of potential jurors do not represent the kind of constitutional infirmity contemplated by Duren.”); Rioux, 97 F.3d at 658 (“There is systematic exclusion when the underrepresentation is due to the system of jury selection itself, rather than external forces. The inability to serve juror questionnaires because they were returned as undeliverable is not due to the system itself, but to outside forces, such as demographic changes.”). Further, appellants presented no evidence that (…continued) of jury service upon receipt of a summons. See 439 U.S. at 361-62, 362 n.14. The result of those procedures, which the Court held were unconstitutional, was that the percentage of women in the jury pool was reduced from 26.7% (of the master jury wheel) to approximately 15% of the venire from which Duren’s jury was selected. Id. at 365-67. 13 Nor have appellants claimed that the Superior Court’s policies “made social or economic factors relevant to whether a[] . . . juror would be excused from service[.]” Hannaford-Agor, supra note 3, at 776-77 (referring to People v. Smith, 615 N.W.2d 1, 12-13 (Mich. 2000), involving a juror-excusal policy that “routinely granted excusal requests for hardship due to loss of income, lack of transportation, and lack of childcare, which disproportionately released African-Americans from jury service”). 21 the Juror Office’s policies and practices in any other way encouraged African Americans to avoid or to be absent from jury service. Appellants suggest a number of steps that the Juror Office might have taken to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in juror venires. For example, they note that some jurisdictions have adopted a practice of responding to each summons returned as undeliverable by mailing a summons to an additional resident from the same neighborhood or zip code.14 That and other measures used by other jurisdictions may well deserve the attention of our Juror Office, but we cannot say that they are constitutionally required. Indeed, as the Second Circuit noted in Rioux, 97 F.3d at 659, such a targeting might well be objectionable “since it would undermine the randomness of selection—an attribute of jury selection that is keenly desired.” In addition, without knowing how the source lists that those jurisdictions draw on for the pool of prospective jurors compare to the wide range of sources used in our jurisdiction,15 we have no basis for concluding that 14 See Courts Try to Maximize Jury Diversity, The Third Branch (July 2007), available at http://www.uscourts.gov/news/TheThirdBranch/07-0701/Courts_Try_to_Maximize_Jury_Diversity.aspx (last visited November 20, 2014). 15 Section 2 of the Jury Plan for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia specifies the lists from which the Master Jury Wheel is created: the list of voters registered in the District of Columbia; the list of drivers, eighteen years or (continued…) 22 corrective measures of the type they employ are equally needed or appropriate here.