Court Opinion

ID: 9684162
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:48:31.19378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:53.500293
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(dissenting).
I join in the dissent of Bardgett, J., on the question of our lack of authority to promulgate rule 24.04 for the reason that it is a procedural rule which changes substantive rights and dissent further on the question of whether our provision permitting women to exempt themselves from petit jury services, Art. I, § 22(b), Mo.Const.1 and *23§ 494.031(2) RSMo Supp.1975, survives the challenge of Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975) and the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. I believe it does not and that the judgment of conviction should be reversed and the cause remanded for this reason also.
The principal opinion is in error, in my judgment, in proceeding on the premise of an alleged “right of Missouri women to jury service” which “remains inviolate though they enjoy an expanded privilege to seek exemption . . . .” No such “right to serve” exists. Many qualified citizens will never sit on a jury. No one has a right to insist that he or she, in particular, be summoned for jury service or serve on a jury.
Rather, a criminal defendant’s right to a trial by jury, applicable to the states under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968), includes the right to “a fair possibility for obtaining a representative cross-section of the community.” Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 100, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 1906, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970). To this right is attached a correlative duty on the part of those citizens called to serve, see Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 23 Yale L.J. 16, 30-32 (1913). Jury service, in short, “is not a right or privilege which may be claimed, but is an obligation imposed by law upon those who come within a designated class possessing the required qualifications.” 47 Am.Jur.2d Jury § 90 (1969).
The principal opinion denies the alleged unconstitutionality under Taylor of our scheme for the voluntary exemption of women from jury duty for two reasons. One is that “the right of Missouri women to jury service remains inviolate.” As I have noted, no such “right” exists. The fact that the duty remains inviolate is not disposi-tive: the duty of women to serve remained inviolate under the Louisiana system, which was nonetheless found unconstitutional in Taylor. The second reason is that “the results of Louisiana’s jury selection scheme [held unconstitutional in Taylor] contrast sharply with those of the selection process in this case.”
The principal opinion observes that the fact that only 14.5-15.5 percent of the jury panels in the relevant period in Jackson County were made up of women (1) represents “a dramatically higher percentage of female representation . . . than that condemned in Taylor ” where less than one percent of the jury panels during the relevant period were made up of women, and (2) is nevertheless explainable “for a wide array of reasons other than the fact of their sex”, such as, for example, the exemptions permitted of school teachers and government workers “whose jobs typically attract substantial numbers of women” or that permitted to persons over age 65, 61 percent of whom are women.
The rule in Taylor is that “it is no longer tenable to hold that women as a class may be excluded or given automatic exemptions based solely on sex if the consequences is that criminal jury venires are almost totally male.” 419 U.S. at 537, 95 S.Ct. at 701. It is not necessary to show a governmental intent to discriminate against women, but only to evaluate the “systematic impact” of our system upon defendants’ rights. Taylor v. Louisiana, supra at 525, 95 S.Ct. 692. The findings before us show that 85 percent of the relevant jury panels in Jackson County were male. No excuse, whether derived from the observations of this court of the role of women in our society or from a percentage comparison of the Louisiana and Missouri systems, can overcome the end result of our gender based exemption. Eighty-five percent or approximately six men to one woman is, to me, “almost totally male.” I simply cannot understand it to be otherwise. The Taylor case does not say that anything more than one percent women is constitutional. The situation in Jackson County is not as bad as it was in St. Tammany Parish, but it does not have to be *24in order to fit the description “almost totally male.”
In Jackson County, Missouri, the right of the women to exemption is given considerable prominence, first in the Official Notice and Questionnaire and next in the summons for jury service. In each she is invited to excuse herself. “[0]nce a woman was informed of her right to automatic exemption, the likelihood that she would be a willing participant in the administration of justice declined markedly.” Comment, 41 Mo.L.Rev. 446, 454 (1976). See People v. Moss, 80 Misc.2d 633, 366 N.Y.S.2d 522 (Sup.Ct.1975).
In the case before us and in the four other cases which were argued along with it, involving five criminal trials in Jackson County, between April 1975 and March 1976, using the jury selection system outlined in the principal opinion, the record showed that a maximum of 15 percent of any jury panel were women.2
Contrast this with the federal court in the Western Division3 of the Western District of Missouri, where the court has no automatic exemption for women, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1861, et seq. (1970), 1968 Federal Jury Selection and Service Act. There, according to recent statistics, 53 percent of the persons on the master wheel and 39.8 percent of the actual jurors were women, J. Van Dyke, Jury Selection Procedures: Our Uncertain Commitments to Representative Panels 357 (1977). Yet aside from the unlimited self-exemption provision for women,4 there is no significant difference between the two court systems as to groups or occupational classes which are excused from jury service.
“In a complex society such as ours, a jury that is the true ‘conscience of the community’ must include a fair cross-section of the groups that make up the community. Each person comes to the jury box as an individual, not as a representative of an ethnic, racial, or age group. But since people’s outlooks and experiences do depend in part upon such factors as socioeconomic status, ethnic background, sex, or age, to ignore such differences is to deny the diversity in society as well as the fundamental character of the ‘community’ whose voice is to be heard in the jury room. So, although each juror’s individuality must be respected (in fact, the system counts on jurors trying to overcome their prejudices to judge a case on its own merits), the juror’s identification with certain demographic groups must be respected.” J. Van Dyke, supra at xiv.
The principal opinion, finally, deals briefly with appellant’s claim under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The problem of defendant’s standing to raise the equal protection claims of himself or of third party males who would allege a disproportionate burden in violation of their equal protection guarantees, is indeed a serious one. Under current United States Supreme Court doctrine it is speculative as to how such a standing question might be resolved, granting that the principle of a representative jury is a requirement of equal protection, Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 130, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940). See Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 193-97, 97 S.Ct. 451, 50 L.Ed.2d 397 (1976); Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 496, n. 4, 92 *25S.Ct. 2163, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972) (opinion by Marshall, J.) (referring to the “same class” rule of some courts that the exclusion of a class from jury service is subject to challenge only by a member of the excluded class); Sedler, Standing to Assert Constitutional Jus Tertii in the Supreme Court, 71 Yale L.J. 599 (1962); Note, Standing to Assert Constitutional Jus Tertii, 88 Harv.L. Rev. 423 (1974).
We are not, however, bound by the justi-ciability doctrines of the federal system which derive from the Article III “case or controversy” requirement of the Constitution and the prudential concerns which the Supreme Court has applied as “matters of judicial self-governance.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975); see Comment, 50 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1163, 1171-73 (1975). Rather, we are obligated to apply our own standards of justici-ability. Note, Protecting Fundamental Rights in State Courts: Fitting a State Peg to a Federal Hole, 12 Harv.C.R.-C.L.L.Rev. 63, 90-93 (1977).
I would hold that where “the exclusion of a discernible class from jury service injures not only those defendants of the excluded class, but other defendants as well, in that it destroys the possibility that the jury will reflect a representative cross-section of the community,” Peters v. Kiff, supra 407 U.S. at 500, 92 S.Ct. at 2167 (opinion of Marshall, J.), that there exists in the instant case a sufficient nexus between the status of the claimant, his allegation, his legal interest, and his requested relief to permit his standing to assert a denial of the equal protection of the laws by our gender based exemption provision for jury duty. We have recently held that a primary objective of the standing doctrine is “to assure that there is a sufficient controversy between the parties [so] that the case will be adequately presented to the court . [for the] purpose of preventing parties from creating controversies in matters in which they are not involved and which do not directly affect them . . . .” Ryder v. County of St. Charles, 552 S.W.2d 705, 707 (Mo.banc 1977). That objective has surely been met here.
I would then consider the substantive merits of the equal protection claim.
“To withstand constitutional challenge, previous cases establish that classifications by gender must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.” Craig v. Boren, supra, 429 U.S. at 197, 97 S.Ct. at 457; see Johnston, Sex Discrimination and the Supreme Court — 1971-1974, 49 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 617 (1974). Under that rule, I can find no valid justification for our gender based scheme, and would therefore hold that it denies defendant equal protection. See Note, Taylor v. Louisiana: Constitutional Implications for Missouri’s Jury Exemption Provisions, 20 St. Louis U.L.J. 159 (1975); Comment, 41 Mo.L.Rev., supra.

. The constitutional exemption for women was the subject of extended debate at the Constitutional Convention, VI Debates of the Missouri Constitutional Convention 1788-1814 (1943-44). A motion to remove the exemption lost 31-32, with the chair casting the deciding vote. Id. at 1814. One of the principal objections voiced by those who would remove the exemp*23tion was that if women were permitted to avoid jury duty by self-exemption, the objective of a representative cross-sectional jury would not be realized.

.The other four cases were as follows: In State v. Harlin, Mo., 556 S.W.2d 42, of the persons summoned and who appeared as prospective jurors during the week of defendant’s trial, only 9.2 percent were women. In State v. Davis, Mo., 556 S.W.2d 45, it was 15 percent women. In State v. Lee, Mo., 556 S.W.2d 25, it does not appear how many of the 300 summoned appeared, but on the panel of 90 for the defendant’s case, only 10 percent were women. In State v. Minor, 556 S.W.2d 35, it does not appear how many jurors were summoned but of the 55 on the defendant’s panel, only 10.9 percent were women.

. The Western Division includes Jackson County and ten other counties. Two thirds of the population of the division is in Jackson County. See Population of Counties, Official Manual of State of Missouri, 1975-1976, Table 3, commencing at page 1217.

. Instead, the federal court provides for excuse on request by a woman charged with care of minor children without adequate domestic help. Amended Plans of the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri for Random Selection and Service of Grand and Petit Jurors § 14(i) (1972).