Court Opinion

ID: 9776032
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:16:57.35995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:33.042995
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION TO REHEAR
FONES, Justice.
Separate but identical petitions to rehear have been filed on behalf of defendants McKay and Sample.
It is asserted that we failed to consider and rule upon the merits of their contention that their constitutional right to a fair and impartial jury was violated by the exclusion *454of persons opposed to the death penalty from service during the guilt phase of the trial.
The separate, but almost identical briefs, filed on behalf of defendants failed to comply with the requirements of T.R.A.P. 27(a)(7) in the presentation of that issue. No reason whatever was articulated in support of the conelusory statement that their constitutional rights were violated, and no evidence of any kind was presented in the trial court in support of that issue. Both briefs cited Grigsby v. Mabry, supra, and McKay’s brief attached a memorandum opinion of the Arkansas federal district judge. Apparently, counsel for defendants are laboring under the illusion that this Court should consider as evidence in this case, so-called expert opinion presented to a federal district court in Arkansas as summarized and accepted by the federal district judge — although no authority was suggested for that proposition.
Grigsby v. Mabry, supra, fails to convince us that the selection process employed in this case produced an unrepresentative jury that increased the risk of conviction.
Defendants also contend that our statement that the United States Supreme Court “has so far rejected similar contentions” is not accurate. They invite us “to re-examine the opinions of the United States Supreme Court” and that “such an examination will reveal that said Honorable Court has never ruled upon the merits of this issue.”
In our opinion heretofore released, we cited Witherspoon v. Illinois, supra, in support of the statement that that court had rejected similar contentions.
We have reread Witherspoon and we continue to be of the opinion that the United States Supreme Court rejected a similar contention therein.
We quote from Witherspoon:
The petitioner contends that a State cannot confer upon a jury selected in this manner the power to determine guilt. He maintains that such a jury, unlike one chosen at random from a cross-section of the community, must necessarily be biased in favor of conviction, for the kind of juror who would be unperturbed by the prospect of sending a man to his death, he contends, is the kind of juror who would too readily ignore the presumption of the defendant’s innocence, accept the prosecution’s version of the facts, and return a verdict of guilt. To support this view, the petitioner refers to what he describes as “competent scientific evidence that death-qualified jurors are partial to the prosecution on the issue of guilt or innocence.”
The data adduced by the petitioner, however, are too tentative and fragmentary to establish that jurors not opposed to the death penalty tend to favor the prosecution in the determination of guilt. We simply cannot conclude, either on the basis of the record now before us or as a matter of judicial notice, that the exclusion of jurors opposed to capital punishment results in an unrepresentative jury on the issue of guilt or substantially increases the risk of conviction. In light of the presently available information, we are not prepared to announce a per se constitutional rule requiring the reversal of every conviction returned by a jury selected as this one was.
391 U.S. at 516-518, 88 S.Ct. at 1774-1775.
Footnote ten describes the so-called scientific evidence as two surveys — one involving 187 college students, W.C. Wilson, Belief in Capital Punishment and Jury Performance (Unpublished Manuscript, University of Texas, 1964), and the other involving 200 college students, F.J. Goldberg, Attitude Toward Capital Punishment and Behavior as a Juror in Simulated Capital Cases (Unpublished Manuscript, Morehouse College, undated). The Supreme Court continues in that footnote to describe another study that defendant included in his petition for certiorari.
Our further examination of opinions of the United States Supreme Court reveals that this issue has not been discussed in any other case, except Bumper v. North *455Carolina, 391 U.S. 543, 88 S.Ct. 1788, 20 L.Ed.2d 797 (1968), released the same date as Witherspoon.
In Bumper the Court said that the evidence “to support the claim that a jury selected as this one was is necessarily ‘prosecution prone/ and the materials referred to in his brief are no more substantial than those brought to our attention in Witherspoon. Accordingly, we decline to reverse the judgment of conviction upon this basis.” 391 U.S. at 545, 88 S.Ct. at 1790.
Counsel for defendants have a different concept of what constitutes a ruling upon the merits of an issue than that of this Court.
The petitions of defendants to rehear are denied.
COOPER, C.J., BROCK and HARBI-SON, JJ., and McLEMORE, Special Justice, concur.