Opinion ID: 1267182
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the traverse jury list

Text: 4. The third question posed to the parties concerned the second prong of the Sixth Amendment test: whether the representation of Hispanics in the Hall County traverse jury pool is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of Hispanics in Hall County. Duren, supra. Generally speaking with regard to the second prong ..., an absolute disparity between the percentage of a group in the population and its percentage in the jury pool of less than 5% is almost always constitutional; an absolute disparity between 5 and 10% is usually constitutional; and an absolute disparity of over 10% is probably unconstitutional. Morrow, supra at 692, 532 S.E.2d 78. The trial court determined that the 2000 Census, which will be available to the jury commission when it compiles Smith's traverse jury list, showed that 17.1% of the over-18 county population is Hispanic. Only 2.6% of the master trial jury list is Hispanic. The trial court found the resulting 14.5% absolute disparity sufficient to satisfy the second prong of the Sixth Amendment test. The State argues that it was error for the trial court to use total over-18 population figures for Hispanics in the county, instead of jury-eligible figures, because the evidence showed that the overwhelming majority of Hall County Hispanics are not U.S. citizens and therefore are ineligible to serve on juries. OCGA § 15-12-40.1 (no person is qualified to serve on a jury unless that person is a U.S. citizen). The extent and effect of any alleged underrepresentation are mixed questions of law and fact: the extent of underrepresentation is a question of fact to be determined by the trial court, and the effect of the disparity, once its extent has been determined, is a question of law. Morrow, supra at 693, 532 S.E.2d 78. With mixed questions of fact and law, this Court accepts the trial court's findings on disputed facts and witness credibility unless clearly erroneous, but independently applies the legal principles to the facts. Id. Witnesses testified that Hispanic immigration into Hall County, primarily from Mexico, accelerated after 1990 and greatly accelerated after 1995. Like the immigration of other ethnic groups into this country, the first arrivals were often males who obtained jobs at higher pay than they were able to obtain in their native country. They worked for limited periods of time, sent money home to their families, and then returned to Mexico. Eventually, as their earnings increased, their stays became longer and some sent for their families and settled permanently. Word spread among their former neighbors in Mexico that Hall County was a good place to live and work, and thus the cycle continued. Witnesses for both Smith and the State testified that few of these new arrivals have obtained U.S. citizenship. This is not surprising, because one of Smith's experts testified about national statistics that show only 23.9% of the immigrants who arrived in this country between 1980 and 1989 have become U.S. citizens, and only 6.7% of the immigrants who have arrived since 1990 have become citizens. This expert, Dr. Bohon, a sociology professor at the University of Georgia, further testified that Hall County Hispanics are disproportionately immigrant and that the fastest rate of Hispanic immigration into Hall County occurred after 1995. She estimated that at least 10% of the Hispanics in Hall County are U.S. citizens. [3] Father Jorge Christancho, a Catholic priest in Hall County whose church has a large number of Hispanic parishioners, testified that the language barrier makes first-generation Hispanic immigrants slow to become assimilated into the non-immigrant community and that there is not a large enrollment in citizenship classes. Richard Beamish, an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent assigned to Hall County, testified that he believed about 5% of Hall County Hispanics are U.S. citizens. Cecilia Perra, a bilingual Hispanic resident of Hall County and a jury commissioner from 1990 to 1996, testified that she tried to recruit Hispanics for the jury list at her predominantly-Hispanic church by passing out jury list application forms, but a lot of them just gave them back, [and] said they weren't citizens. The jury list application form contains a self-affirming oath attesting to U.S. citizenship; the voter registration form also contains this citizenship requirement. The voters' registration list was the primary source of names for the jury list. When alleging underrepresentation of a distinctive group, a defendant must, to establish a prima facie case, present data showing that the percentage of persons in that group [on the jury list] is significantly lower than the percentage eligible to serve on juries. (Emphasis supplied.) United States v. Artero, 121 F.3d 1256, 1262 (9th Cir.1997). [A] comparison of percentages in [the jury pool] and `the gross population' is `irrelevant,' because `the pertinent inquiry is the pool of [the group claimed to be underrepresented] in the district who are eligible to serve as jurors.' [Cit.] Artero, supra. See also United States v. Grisham, 63 F.3d 1074, 1078 (11th Cir.1995) (To examine the second element [of the Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section test], we must compare the difference between the percentage of the distinctive group among the population eligible for jury service and the percentage of the distinctive group on the [jury list].); United States v. Pion, 25 F.3d 18, 23, n. 5 (1st Cir.1994); United States v. Rodriguez, 776 F.2d 1509, 1511, n. 6 (11th Cir.1985). The decisions of this Court suggest, and common sense demands, that eligible population statistics, not gross population figures, provide the relevant starting point. Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 504, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977) (Burger, C.J., dissenting). The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confronted an almost identical situation in Artero, supra at 1260-1262, as the case now before us. Artero argued that the grand jury that indicted him was not drawn from a fair cross-section of the community because Hispanics were underrepresented on the grand jury list for the Southern District of California. He claimed that Hispanics comprised 24.2% of the population of that district, but only 9.7% of the names on the jury wheel. This resulted in an absolute disparity of 14.5%. The Ninth Circuit determined that Artero's numbers were insufficient to establish a prima facie Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section violation because he did not account for the large number of southern California Hispanics who were not U.S. citizens and thus ineligible to serve as grand jurors. To serve on a federal jury, a person must be a U.S. citizen. 28 U.S.C. § 1865(b)(1). When adjusting the statistical evidence to account for citizenship, the absolute disparity for jury-eligible Hispanics in the Southern District of California was 4.9%, which was insufficient to establish the second prong of the Sixth Amendment test. Artero, supra at 1261; Esquivel, 88 F.3d at 727. See also Morrow, supra at 695, 532 S.E.2d 78; Cook, supra. With regard to Smith's argument that courts do not scrutinize other distinctive groups, like males or African-Americans, for citizenship eligibility, the Artero court stated: Sometimes a distinctive group's proportion of the population is an adequate substitute for its proportion of those eligible to serve on federal juries. For example, in Duren, there was no reason to doubt the usefulness of comparing the percentage of women summoned for jury service to the percentage in the district, because there is no reason to think women would be disproportionately ineligible to serve on juries. [Cit.] Probably a higher percentage of women than men are jury-eligible, because women on average live longer and get convicted of felonies less than men. But in our nation of immigrants, it stands to reason that border counties and ports of entry would have significant numbers of immigrants not yet eligible to serve on federal juries. It took many of our ancestors a while to learn English and become citizens. ... Where there is no reason to suppose that the percentage of persons in that group in the population is higher than the percentage eligible to serve, then the former may adequately support an inference as to the latter. Where such an inference is not reasonable, then disparity of percentages in the general population and in the jury [pool] cannot suffice, because the general population ratio does not imply the jury-eligible ratio. Artero, supra at 1262. To establish a prima facie case of a fair-cross-section Sixth Amendment violation, Smith had to show an actionable disparity between the percentage of Hispanics on the traverse jury list and the percentage of Hispanics in Hall County who are jury-eligible. See id. at 1260; Duren, supra. He based his percentage of jury-eligible Hall County Hispanics on census numbers showing that the number of over-18 Hall County Hispanics was 17,424, but the evidence showed that the over-18 Hispanics who are U.S. citizens, and thus eligible to serve on juries, amounts to a small fraction of that number. Even a generous assumption, based on testimony, that a fifth of the over-18 Hispanics in Hall County are U.S. citizens, still leaves the absolute disparity between the percentage of Hispanics on the traverse jury list and the percentage of jury-eligible Hispanics in Hall County at only 0.82%, well within constitutional bounds. [4] See Morrow, supra at 695, 532 S.E.2d 78; Cook, supra. The trial court erred by finding that Smith had satisfied the second prong of the Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section test. 5. The fourth question posed to the parties involves the third prong of the Sixth Amendment test: whether the trial court correctly found that Smith had met his burden of showing systematic exclusion of Hispanics on the traverse jury list. See Duren, supra; Morrow, supra at 692, 532 S.E.2d 78. The trial court determined that the fact that Hispanics had historically not been separately tracked on the traverse jury list amounted to systematic exclusion. The trial court also found that the Hall County jury commission had made insufficient efforts to recruit Hispanics for the jury list. The evidence showed that the voters' registration list was historically the primary source of names for the traverse jury list. [5] The person in charge of Hall County voter registration, Anne Phillips, testified that people can register to vote at the voters' registration office, by mail, and at libraries, welfare offices, and driver's license offices. In fact, most new Hall County voters now register at driver's license offices. Some government agencies are also required to ask applicants if they would like to register to vote. The voter registration forms, which are supplied by the State of Georgia, contain a self-affirming oath attesting to U.S. citizenship. The forms have identity blocks to check for male, female, white, black and other; multiracial was added in 1998; Hispanic has been recently added. Before the Hispanic block was added, some Hispanics checked the other block and wrote Hispanic on the line next to it. Ms. Phillips testified that there have been voter registration drives by various groups in Hall County with the specific goal of encouraging Hispanics to register to vote. She estimated that approximately 1,400 Hispanics/Others are registered to vote out of 64,790 registered voters in the county (about 2.2%). The jury selection clerk for Hall County testified regarding the jury list application form, which allows people to apply directly for inclusion on the jury list. The form contains check-off blocks for male, female, black, white and other. It also contains a question about U.S. citizenship and a self-affirming oath attesting to the truth of all answers on the form. Several jury commissioners and the jury selection clerk testified about their efforts to recruit additional Hispanics for the jury list. The jury selection clerk, knowing that the jury commission wanted to recruit additional Hispanics for the jury list, personally asked 20 to 50 Hispanics if they wanted to apply for inclusion on the jury list. None responded affirmatively. Some current and former jury commissioners also tried to recruit Hispanics for the jury list, with little success. As previously mentioned, a Hispanic jury commissioner in the 1990's had many Hispanics hand back application forms and say that they were not U.S. citizens; she testified that it was hard to find a Hispanic U.S. citizen in Hall County at that time who was not already on the jury list. The jury commission also obtained Hispanic names from a charity's list, but some of the people on the list had moved out of the county. Additionally, they placed an advertisement in a local newspaper seeking Hispanic volunteers for the jury list, but only received about ten responses. As regards the third prong of the Sixth Amendment test, Smith must show that [Hispanics are] underrepresented in the jury-selection process due to systematic exclusion. United States v. Garcia, supra at 491. See also Duren, 439 U.S. at 364, 99 S.Ct. 664. To prove systematic exclusion, Smith must show the exclusion is `inherent in the particular jury-selection process utilized.' Garcia, supra, quoting Duren, supra at 366, 99 S.Ct. 664. For example, in Duren, the underrepresentation of women in the jury pool resulted from a state law that allowed eligible women to exempt themselves from jury service. Duren, supra at 366-367, 99 S.Ct. 664. Smith has shown no such inherent exclusion in the jury selection process utilized in Hall County. Courts have held that when the voter registration list is the primary source of names for the jury list, `the mere fact that one identifiable group of individuals votes in a lower proportion than the rest of the population does not make a jury selection system illegal or unconstitutional.' [Cit.] Garcia, supra at 492. See also United States v. Ireland, 62 F.3d 227, 231 (8th Cir.1995); Cook, 255 Ga. at 574, 340 S.E.2d 843. There was no showing of any effort to impede Hispanic voter registration in Hall County, although Hispanics comprise only about 2.2% of the county's registered voters. There was also no evidence that the jury commission acted in a discriminatory manner by limiting or excluding Hispanic participation in the Hall County jury pool, although Hispanics comprise only 2.6% of the persons on the traverse jury list. See Garcia, supra. In fact, the evidence showed that the Hall County jury commission made efforts, albeit sporadic at times, to recruit additional eligible Hispanics for the jury list, and Smith's counsel conceded at oral argument before this Court that those efforts continue to this day. The relatively small number of Hispanic U.S. citizens in Hall County explains the disparity between the percentage of Hispanic voters and jurors on those respective lists and the percentage of over-18 Hispanics in the county population. If Hispanics in [Hall County] were less likely than others to be citizens, then non-citizenship rather than systematic exclusion of qualified individuals would explain both lower percentages of registered voters and lower representation in the jury [pool]. Artero, supra at 1262. With regard to the trial court's order stating that systematic exclusion resulted from the absence of a category for Hispanics on the jury list, there is no evidence that the failure to classify Hispanics prevented eligible Hispanics from registering to vote or applying for the jury list. In fact, cases involving Hispanic representation in the jury pool frequently involve the use of expert witnesses whose role is to analyze the jury list or wheel to determine the number of Hispanics included therein. See Artero, supra at 1261 (defense expert applied Spanish surname search to jury wheel to determine number of Hispanics on list); Esquivel, supra at 726; United States v. Esle, 743 F.2d 1465, 1471 (11th Cir.1984) (defense expert estimated the number of Hispanics on the jury wheel). Moreover, as shown in Division 4, the percentage of jury-eligible Hispanics in Hall County is close to the percentage of Hispanics on the traverse jury list, and there is no evidence that significant disparities between jury-eligible Hispanics in the county and Hispanics on the traverse jury list existed previously. See Duren, supra at 366, 99 S.Ct. 664. We conclude that Smith failed to demonstrate the systematic exclusion of jury-eligible Hispanics in Hall County's jury selection system. Accordingly, the trial court erred by finding that Smith met his burden of proving the third prong of the Sixth Amendment test. 6. Because Smith failed to carry his burden of proof regarding the second and third prongs of the Sixth Amendment test, he did not establish a prima facie fair-cross-section Sixth Amendment violation. See Duren, supra at 364, 99 S.Ct. 664; Morrow, supra at 692, 532 S.E.2d 78. Therefore, we need not consider the fifth question posed to the parties concerning the State's rebuttal of Smith's prima facie case. Juries can only be composed of people who are by law eligible to serve, and the evidence does not show that eligible Hispanic residents of Hall County are constitutionally underrepresented in the jury pool. However, Hispanic representation in Hall County's jury pool will continue to increase. As noted by Dr. Bohon's statistics, the percentage of immigrants who become United States citizens grows over time, and their children will be citizens by virtue of their birth in this country. As these Americans seize opportunity, the result will be greater Hispanic participation in the judicial and political processes in Hall County and the rest of the state. In our nation of immigrants, it has always been this way. Judgment affirmed in part and reversed in part.