Court Opinion

ID: 9458177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:44:43.327817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:39.859576
License: Public Domain

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
For 26 years appellant has withheld any challenge to the methods by which the juries were chosen that indicted and convicted him of murder in 1942. Nothing is adduced to show why the contentions he now makes could not have been *1387asserted then. However, it is conclusively established that this inexplicable delay obstructs, if not defeats, the ability of the State to rebut his charges. Time, through death, disappearance of witnesses and destruction of records, serves one who would fault the proceedings in which he has been convicted.
The record indicates that Complete information on the composition of jury rolls at the time of Hairston’s conviction is no longer existent. He does not and cannot demonstrate the racial profile of the population eligible at that time for jury service.
Rather than reveal discrimination in the drawing of Negroes as jurors, the evidence indicates that inclusion of them was essayed. Witnesses without contradiction testified that the Judge of the State Court in which Hairston was tried had explicitly directed as early as 1935 that Negroes be put on jury rolls, obeying the precept of Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 55 S.Ct. 579, 79 L.Ed. 1074 (1935). The mere circumstance that none served on the juries which .indicted and convicted petitioner — -a fact subject to a witness’ suggestion that one of the petit jurors may have been a Negro— does not support the claim of systematic exclusion entitling petitioner. to relief. Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313, 25 L.Ed. 667 (1879). Furthermore, witnesses testified to personal knowledge that Negroes were on the juries in 1944.
Taken together, including the protracted delay of the appellant, the facts recounted herein preclude the assertion of a denial of due process in his trial and conviction.
The decision upon which the majority now rests, Alexander v. Louisiana, 405 U.S. 625, 92 S.Ct. 1221, 31 L.Ed.2d 536 (April 3, 1972), is not precedent here. There the objection to the selection of the grand jury was made before, not 26 years after, trial.
I would affirm the District., Court’s dismissal of the appellant’s claim.