Court Opinion

ID: 9478710
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:55:50.268651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:34.640556
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
This case presents the difficult jurisprudential question of whether the Appellee’s sixth amendment right to a jury venire composed of a representative cross-section of the community was violated under the Supreme Court’s decisional commands in this troublesome area of the law. In order to prove a prima facie case of such a violation, the Appellee has to show three things: (1) that blacks are a distinctive group in the community; (2) that black representation on jury venires was not fair and reasonable in relation to their numbers in the community; and (3) that the underrepresentation resulted from systematic exclusion of blacks. See Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 668, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979). The majority concludes, through succinct, well-reasoned analysis with which I agree, that the Appellee has successfully met the first two requirements. The majority also finds, however, that the Appel-lee’s proof of systematic exclusion is wanting so that summary judgment should be entered for the Appellant. With that I cannot agree. I believe that the Appellee has successfully made out a prima facie case that his sixth amendment right to a jury selected from a venire made up of a cross-section of the legislatively mandated community has been violated. Since the state has failed to rebut that prima facie case by showing a significant state interest justifying the underrepresentation, I respectfully dissent.
The majority advances two arguments in support of its finding that the Appellee failed to show that the underrepresentation of blacks on his venire was due to systematic exclusion. First, the majority states that the Appellee’s statistics do not prove systematic exclusion because they are based on raw census data rather than voter eligibility data. This position apparently assumes that statistics can be used to show systematic exclusion and finds a deficiency only in the kind of statistics offered by the Appellee. I conclude that statistics, standing alone, can seldom, if ever, establish systematic exclusion. Permitting a person to prove systematic exclusion through the use of statistics effectively merges the second Duren requirement, that there was underrepresentation given the groups numbers in the community, with the third requirement. Thus, I believe it is not relevant in this case, at least for purposes of proving systematic exclusion, that the Appellant relied on census data as opposed to voter eligibility data.
Second, the majority finds that the Ap-pellee has failed to produce any direct evidence of systematic exclusion in his particular case. For example, the majority points out that there is no evidence that the jury supervisor actually asked the “convenience questions” to the veniremembers in this case, that anyone actually volunteered to go to the Des Plaines courthouse, or that the venire was made up of people who resided near the courthouse. But all these *1018areas might have been explored had the state court judge acceeded to the Defendant’s request for an evidentiary hearing to determine the cause of the all-white venire. Given that denial by the state trial court, I believe it becomes incumbent upon the state, at least in this case where the Appel-lee has supplied a plausible explanation for the underepresentation of blacks on his venire, to show that blacks were not systematically excluded from the venire. Since the state has failed to show that the exclusion was the result of some neutral factor unrelated to the jury selection system, that burden has not been met.
Nor is it likely that the state could succeed in justifying the underrepresentation if there were a remand for purposes of an evidentiary hearing. Mr. Covelli, the jury supervisor, testified that he cannot remember whether he asked the “convenience questions” to the potential veniremembers in this particular case. Also, there apparently is no information remaining on the geographic makeup of the veniremembers actually selected. Thus, on the law as mandated by the Supreme Court and the facts produced here, where the trial court refused to provide an evidentiary hearing to the Appellant to discover the reason why 40 whites made up his venire and where no neutral reason was advanced by the state to account for this venire, I am forced to conclude that the systematic exclusion prong of Duren has been established.1
In sum, I think that the Appellee has shown a prima facie case of a violation of his sixth amendment right to a jury venire made up of a cross-section of the community. Therefore, I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

. The majority also states that the Appellee has failed to show systematic exclusion since “Davis has not offered any proof, beyond the record from one prior case, that a pattern of exclusion existed in the Des Plaines courthouse.” Other courts have also held that in order to prove systematic exclusion, evidence must be adduced from more than just the case at bar. See Timmel v. Phillips, 799 F.2d 1083, 1086-87 (5th Cir.1986) ("One incidence of a jury venire being disproportionate is not evidence of a ‘systematic’ exclusion.”); Euell v. Wyrick, 714 F.2d 821, 823 (8th Cir.1983) ("[wje could end our inquiry [as to systematic exclusion] by stating that Euell has failed to prove a general underrepresentation of women”). Still, I believe that following Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), systematic exclusion can be shown based on the evidence from a single case.
In Batson, the Supreme Court rejected its earlier pronouncement, made in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), that an equal protection violation based on a prosecutor’s use of his peremptory challenges could only be proved by evidence that the peremptory challenges were used to strike a particular group in "case after case." According to the Court in Batson, the evidentiary requirement of Swain created an insurmountable burden for defendants. Thus, the Court rejected Swain's evidentiary requirement and held instead that a defendant could make out a prima facie case of an equal protection violation "by relying solely on the facts concerning the [ve-nire] selection in his case." 106 S.Ct. at 1722 (emphasis in original).
Although Batson involved an equal protection claim, I believe that its reasoning would also extend to a case under the sixth amendment. In both sixth amendment and equal protection cases, the Court has been highly suspicious of instances of significant group underrepresentation "where the selection mechanism is subject to abuse." Id. In this case, the method of selecting veniremembers was subject to abuse and, therefore, the Defendant can successfully show "systematic exclusion” of blacks based solely on evidence from his own case.