Court Opinion

ID: 9795242
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:23:27.770006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:28:14.457180
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Concurring.
I agree in full with the majority opinion, but have a brief comment on its discussion of the motion to quash the jury venire based on underrepresentation of Black persons.
The majority discusses the United States Supreme Court’s three-part test of Duren v. Missouri (1979) 439 U.S. 357 [99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579]; the second prong of that test requires a defendant attacking the venire to *894show “that the representation of [the excluded] group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community.” (Id. at p. 364 [99 S.Ct. at p. 668].)
Blacks constituted 4.5 percent of the population of Riverside County, but only 3.5 percent of defendant’s venire. Defendant asked this court to find that Blacks were unfairly excluded from his venire by using the “comparative disparity” test, which measures the percentage difference between the proportion of Blacks in the venire and that in the county population. Here that difference is about 22 percent. The Attorney General asked us to use the “absolute disparity” test, which measures the disparity as a percentage of total population. The absolute disparity here is only 1 percent—the difference between the percentage of Blacks in the county population (4.5 percent) and the percentage for the venire (3.5 percent). The majority does not expressly choose between the competing tests. But in dictum it criticizes the comparative disparity test as distorting the underrepresentation when the group allegedly excluded is very small (maj. opn., ante, at p. 860), yet offers no criticism of the absolute disparity test.
For the sake of balance, and to avoid any implication that this court has an unstated preference for the absolute disparity test, I think it important to note that the absolute disparity test suffers from an even more serious defect when the group allegedly excluded is very small. If the defendant must prove an absolute disparity of more than 10 percent, as in Swain v. Alabama (1965) 380 U.S. 202, 208-209 [85 S.Ct. 824, 829-830, 13 L.Ed.2d 759], cited with apparent approval by the majority opinion, ante, at page 860, then the systematic total exclusion of any minorities comprising less than 10 percent of county population would pass constitutional inspection under Duren v. Missouri, supra, 439 U.S. 357. (See Williams v. Superior Court (1989) 49 Cal.3d 736, 751 [263 Cal.Rptr. 503, 781 P.2d 537] (conc. opn. of Broussard, J.).) Even a 5 percent absolute disparity test would permit counties to adopt jury selection methods that systematically excluded Blacks in many California counties, (including Riverside County), Asians in almost all counties, and Native Americans in every county, because these minorities comprise less than 5 percent of the county population. This court should not, even by implication, endorse such a test.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied April 9, 2003, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above.