Opinion ID: 853071
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Effect of the Elimination of 87% of Wayne Township from Jury Service

Text: The United States Supreme Court has long held that the selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 528, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975). We think our state statute, in requiring an impartial and random selection demands no less. Although we reach our holding today under Indiana Code section 33-4-5-2(c) and not under the Sixth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, we think that the Indiana statute ultimately turns on an issue very similar to Sixth Amendment analysis: whether the flaws in a jury selection system are so minor as to be inconsequential or are material enough that a segment of the population has been materially excluded. The federal courts have developed two competing tests under the Sixth Amendment to determine if a jury pool adequately represents the community. Under the absolute disparity test, the disparity is the difference between the percentage of the distinctive group eligible for jury duty and the percentage represented in the pool. In this case, where the percentage of African-Americans eligible for jury duty in Allen county is 8.5% and the percentage represented in the pool is 4.4%, this amounts to an absolute disparity of 4.1%. Under the comparative disparity test, the disparity is calculated by dividing the absolute disparity by the percentage of the group eligible for jury duty. Here, that results in the division of 4.1% by 8.5%, for a comparative disparity of 48.2%. Put differently, as the result of flaws in Allen County's system, African-Americans as a group had roughly half the chance of being included on a jury panel than a truly random system would have produced. Nevertheless, the post-conviction court concluded that in Azania's case the computerized system impartially and randomly select[ed] citizens to be jurors, and thus substantially complie[d] with [section 33-4-5-2(c)]. We agree this may be true for non-death penalty cases, but we do not agree that the Allen County system in place in 1996 was sufficiently impartial or random to support a jury recommendation of the death penalty. As the Supreme Court of the United States held in Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 413, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991): The purpose of the jury system is to impress upon the criminal defendant and the community as a whole that a verdict of conviction or acquittal is given in accordance with the law by persons who are fair. The verdict will not be accepted or understood in these terms if the jury is chosen by unlawful means at the outset. The Indiana jury selection statute is designed to ensure that the method used to select a jury is not arbitrary and does not result in the systematic exclusion of any group. The United States Supreme Court has long emphasized that the qualitative difference of death from all other punishments requires a correspondingly greater degree of scrutiny of the capital sentencing determination. California v. Ramos, 463 U.S. 992, 998-99, 103 S.Ct. 3446, 77 L.Ed.2d 1171 (1983). The Supreme Court has also held, in a death penalty case, that a jury's being chosen from a fair cross section of the community is critical to public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system, and that the systematic exclusion of identifiable segments playing major roles in the community cannot be squared with the constitutional concept of jury trial. Taylor, 419 U.S. at 530, 95 S.Ct. 692. Widespread concern over the fairness and reliability of death sentences demands that the courts and the public have no significant doubts as to the integrity and fairness of the process. These same considerations require heightened sensitivity in a death penalty case in determining whether a jury selection system is random and impartial as required by Indiana law. In this case, Azania properly preserved his right to contest the impartiality of the computerized system by moving to strike the entire jury pool. As the court below noted, the system's programming error excluded 4364 peopleroughly one-third of the jury poolfrom possible service, and reduced by nearly one-half the odds that an African-American would appear on the jury panel. Every one of the excluded jury pool members was from Wayne Township, the township in which three-fourths of Allen County's African-Americans over age 18 resided. The net result was that the flaws inherent in the selection system materially reduced the probability that African-Americans would serve on Azania's penalty phase jury. Accordingly, the system did not substantially comply with section 33-4-5-2(c), and a new penalty phase is required. Finally, as the dissent observes, in 1982 Azania requested a transfer of this case from Lake County, where Officer Yaros was slain. Unlike the dissent, we do not consider that to be relevant here. Azania exercised his right under generally applicable procedures to seek a transfer to another county. In so electing, he did not forfeit his right to a properly selected jury in the new county, whatever its demographic composition.