Opinion ID: 2280054
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the challenge to the composition of the grand and petit juries

Text: Prior to trial defendant filed a motion challenging the composition of the grand and petit juries on two grounds: (1) the exclusion from jury service of all persons between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one; and (2) the exemption given to professors and students at recognized colleges and universities was in violation of the requirement that jurors should represent a cross section of the community. The trial justice conducted a hearing on the question of the composition of the grand and petit juries. The sole thrust of the defense position at this hearing as set forth in the testimony of Professor James Wright of the University of Massachusetts was to the effect that young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one form a cognizable class in the community and that they formed a portion of the state's population of approximately 5.90 percent. An examination of the testimony of Professor Wright as well as the direct examination of Jury Commissioner Alfred Travers, Jr. discloses a complete absence of any reference to any academic group, but rather a complete concentration and reference to young people in the eighteen to twenty-one-year-old age group. [1] From the foregoing presentation of evidence, only one possessed of occult skills would ever draw the inference that defendant was engaged in forming a factual predicate for an objection to the exemption granted to members of the academic community even though the motion itself had contained such an assertion. On appeal, however, the public defender has included extensive reference to a study that was completed by personnel of the public defender's office after the date of the hearing. No reference is made on appeal to the exclusion of persons in the eighteen to twenty-one-year age group, and all concentration is upon the exemption of members of the academic community based upon figures and data which were never presented to the trial justice. Nothing is more well settled in terms of appellate practice than the proposition that a matter may not be raised on appeal which was not initially presented and articulated in the trial court. State v. Robalewski, R.I., 418 A.2d 817 (1980); State v. Pope, R.I., 414 A.2d 781, 786-87 (1980). It is true that we have considered in limited circumstances alleged deprivation of basic constitutional rights for the first time on appeal. State v. McGehearty, R.I., 394 A.2d 1348 (1978). However, in that case the issue raised was not known to counsel as a viable constitutional claim at the time of the trial. Moreover, there was apparently no intentional bypass of the issue. In the case at bar, the choice not to present evidence or data regarding the exemption granted to members of the academic community can only be construed as a considered choice on the part of counsel. A mere oblique reference to an issue that is not litigated and upon which a factual predicate is not even sought to be made furnishes no basis for appellate review. On the record before us, we cannot fault the trial justice for having failed to rule upon a question that was not presented to him in a rational and recognizable posture.