Opinion ID: 1254804
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Evidence at defendant's motion to quash the jury venire.

Text: At the motion to quash the jury venire, the parties stipulated that the trial court could read and consider the testimony in a similar case of Raymond Arce, the Director of Juror Services Division of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. That testimony described the procedure employed at the time of this trial to select potential jurors. The jury commissioner drew names randomly from the list of the registrar of voters and mailed questionnaires to the people selected. Completed questionnaires were used to exclude individuals as prospective jurors and to compile the master jury pool. No follow-up procedure was used to pursue those who did not return the questionnaire. In Mr. Arce's view, the main problem with use of sources in addition to voter registration would be the avoidance of duplication of potential jurors when the lists have few common characteristics except for name and address. At the time of this trial, however, 29 of the 46 California counties were using multiple sources for identifying potential jurors. Since July 1, 1981, the use of multiple source lists has been required by Code of Civil Procedure section 204.7. [1] In support of his motion to quash the jury venire, defendant offered evidence compiled by Professor Edgar Butler, chairman of the sociology department at the University of California at Riverside. Dr. Butler holds degrees in sociology and demography and has conducted studies of jury panels in all of the judicial districts in Los Angeles County. His qualifications are not challenged, and his work has been the basis for similar motions in other cases. Dr. Butler conducted a survey of Long Beach Superior Court jury panels from May 5 through August 15, 1979. The survey compared the composition of jury venires appearing at the Long Beach courthouse to the composition of the entire County of Los Angeles. The survey involved only those potential jurors appearing at the Long Beach courthouse, not the original contact pool. The survey was conducted through the use of questionnaires distributed by the jury clerk. Nine hundred fifty-nine potential jurors, 98 percent of all those appearing at the courthouse, completed the voluntary questionnaire. The forms asked questions regarding sex, age, education, income and ethnicity. The study revealed that for the period during which the survey was conducted, 5.5 percent of the Long Beach potential jurors were Black and 3.4 percent were Hispanic. Dr. Butler's estimates of Los Angeles County populations were based on the 1970 census supplemented with later studies of population changes. The 1970 census indicated that 18.3 percent of Los Angeles County was Hispanic and 10.8 percent Black. Dr. Butler estimated that in 1975, Los Angeles was 21.3 percent Hispanic and 11.6 percent Black. He projected that in 1980, 33 percent of Los Angeles County would be Hispanic and 15 to 17 percent would be Black. Dr. Butler's estimate did not exclude illegal aliens, persons under 18 years of age, or others who would be statutorily ineligible to serve as jurors. Comparing these county-wide figures to the results of the jury venire surveys, Dr. Butler testified that the comparative disparity [2] for Blacks was 49 percent using 1970 figures, 53 percent for 1975, and 67 percent for 1980. For Hispanics the comparative disparities were 81 percent for 1970, 84 percent for 1975, and 90 percent for 1980. Defendant has also presented other figures based on the 1980 census, [3] which, of course, became available after defendant's trial. Those figures show that the 1980 Black population in Los Angeles County was 12.6 percent, and the Hispanic population was 27.6 percent. The comparative disparity for 1980 using these figures is 56.3 percent for Blacks and 87.7 percent for Hispanics. We recognize that Long Beach juries are not selected evenly from all parts of Los Angeles County. Code of Civil Procedure section 203 provides that in the County of Los Angeles no juror shall be required to serve at a distance greater than 20 miles from his or her residence. It is likely that most of the jurors interviewed by Dr. Butler at the Long Beach courthouse came from within a 20-mile radius of the courthouse, a fact which may account to some degree for the discrepancy in racial representation between the persons interviewed and the county population. The parties, however, presented evidence and argued this case on the assumption that all juries in Los Angeles County must be representative of the entire county. The principal question before us is whether evidence based on total countywide population figures, rather than jury-eligible population, is adequate to make out a prima facie case; for the reasons explained in this opinion, we conclude that it is. The state has not attempted to rebut this prima facie showing by arguing that the Long Beach juries need only represent those persons living within 20 miles of the courthouse, and has not attempted to show that such juries were truly representative of that limited area.