Court Opinion

ID: 9643046
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:16:41.192553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:14.875895
License: Public Domain

NIX, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
No proposition is more fundamental to our accepted notions of due process than the proposition that a person charged with a serious crime is entitled, as a matter of right, to trial by a fair and impartial jury selected from a representative cross-section of the community. Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979); Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975); Commonwealth v. Cohen, 489 Pa. 167, 413 A.2d 1066, cert. denied, 449 U.S. 840, 101 S.Ct. 118, 66 L.Ed.2d 47 (1980); Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Jerome, 478 Pa. 484, 387 A.2d 425 (1978), appeal dismissed, 443 U.S. 913, 99 S.Ct. 3104, 61 L.Ed.2d 877 (1979); Commonwealth v. Hoss, 469 Pa. 195, 364 A.2d 1335 (1976); Commonwealth v. Jones, 465 Pa. 473, 350 A.2d 862 (1976); Commonwealth v. Jones, 452 Pa. 299, 304 A.2d 684 (1973); Commonwealth v. Pierce, 451 Pa. 190, 303 A.2d 209, cert. denied, 414 U.S. 878, 94 S.Ct. 164, 38 L.Ed.2d 124 (1973); Commonwealth v. Stewart, 449 Pa. 50, 295 A.2d 303 (1972), cert. denied, 417 U.S. 949, 94 S.Ct. 3078, 41 L.Ed.2d 670 (1974); Commonwealth v. Cornitcher, 447 Pa. 539, 291 A.2d 521 (1972); *171Commonwealth v. Carroll, 443 Pa. 518, 278 A.2d 898 (1971); Commonwealth ex rel. Smith v. Patterson, 409 Pa. 500, 187 A.2d 278 (1963); William Goldman Theatres, Inc. v. Dana, 405 Pa. 83, 173 A.2d 59, cert. denied, 368 U.S. 897, 82 S.Ct. 174, 7 L.Ed.2d 93 (1961). This basic precept is deeply rooted in the rights to jury trial and to due process of law guaranteed under both the federal and our state constitutions. U.S. Const. Amends. 5, 6, 14; Pa. Const. Art. I, §§ 6, 9. The grave decision as to whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty of a capital crime must not be made on scales tipped by state procedures toward guilt. Cf. Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968). I believe the time has come to acknowledge on the basis of the considerable reliable empirical data now available that which common sense has long suggested to be true, namely, that the death qualification process practiced in this and other jurisdictions produces juries that are both prosecution-prone and unrepresentative.
Appellant’s challenge to Pennsylvania’s death qualification procedure cannot properly be disposed of, as the majority purports to do, by a passing reference to Witherspoon v. Illinois, supra. In Witherspoon the United States Supreme Court declined to find that the exclusion of jurors unalterably opposed to capital punishment results in an unrepresentative jury or substantially increases the risk of conviction, concluding that the data made available to the Court was “too tentative and fragmentary.” Id. at 517, 88 S.Ct. at 1774. The Court, however, left open the possibility that “a defendant convicted by such a jury in some future case might still attempt to establish that the jury was less than neutral with respect to guilt.” Id. at 520 n. 18, 88 S.Ct. at 1776 n. 18. The Witherspoon Court thus made it clear that more impressive empirical data would be required before the prosecution-proneness question could be resolved.
In the intervening fifteen years, the Witherspoon Court’s understandable hesitancy has generated numerous studies of increasing reliability and precision in support of the dual *172hypothesis that death qualified juries are both prosecution-prone and unrepresentative. These studies now demonstrate convincingly that persons favoring the death penalty are significantly more likely to vote for conviction in capital cases and that persons excluded from jury service on the basis of their unwillingness to impose the death penalty represent a distinct and sizeable group in the community. Thus it would appear that Witherspoon no longer presents a valid obstacle to the challenge raised herein. In fact, faced with the mass of information presently available, at least two federal trial courts have now invalidated state death qualification procedures on federal constitutional grounds. Keeten v. Garrison, 578 F.Supp. 1164 (W.D.N.C. 1984); Grigsby v. Mabry, 569 F.Supp. 1273 (E.D.Ark.1983). The United States Supreme Court has yet to reevaluate its position in. Witherspoon. Without attempting to predict the outcome of such a reassessment by that Court, I am satisfied that the death qualification procedure violates the guarantees of Article I, sections 6 and 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution1 and would so hold.
The prosecution-proneness of death qualified jurors is firmly established by the results of a definitive study of the question reported in Cowan, Thompson & Ellsworth, The Effects of Death Qualification, on Jurors’ Predisposition to Convict and on the Quality of Deliberation, 8 Law & Human Behavior 53 (1984) (hereinafter “Cowan”). The participants in the study were 288 adults eligible for jury *173service.2 Each was questioned as to his or her attitude toward the death penalty. Those indicating an unwillingness to impose the death penalty in any case were classified as “Witherspoon -excludables” while those who stated they would consider voting to impose it in some cases were labeled “death qualified.” The participants were also asked whether they would be fair and impartial in deciding the question of*guilt or innocence, and those who answered that they would not were excluded. The remaining subjects were shown a videotape of a simulated trial “complex enough to afford several plausible interpretations and verdict preferences.” Id. at 63. A verdict questionnaire was distributed to each participant at the conclusion of the videotape. A tabulation of the votes revealed that 77.9 percent of the death qualified subjects voted to convict of some level of homicide, as opposed to only 53.3 percent of the Witherspoon -excludables, a highly significant difference of 25 percent.3 The Cowan study is of considerable *174importance not only for its finding of a high correlation between death penalty attitudes and conviction-proneness, but also because it successfully replicated the results of prior post-Witherspoon studies. See Jurow, New Data on the Effect of a Death Qualified Jury on the Guilt Determination Process, 84 Harv.L.Rev. 567 (1971); White, The Constitutional Invalidity of Convictions Imposed by Death-Qualified Juries, 58 Cornell L.Rev. 1176 (1973) (reporting a 1971 study by Louis Harris and Associates).
The conclusion that death qualified juries are conviction-prone is further buttressed by a number of studies which reveal why death qualified juries are more likely to convict. See, e.g., Cowan, supra; Fitzgerald & Ellsworth, Due Process vs. Crime Control: Death Qualification and Jury Attitudes, 8 Law & Human Behavior 31 (1984) (hereinafter “Fitzgerald ”); Thompson, Cowan, Ellsworth & Harrington, Death Penalty Attitudes and Conviction Proneness, 8 Law & Human Behavior 94 (1984) (hereinafter “Thompson”); Bronson, On the Conviction-Proneness and Representativeness of the Death-Qualified Jury: An Empirical Study of Colorado Veniremen, 42 U.Colo.L.Rev. 1 (1970) (hereinafter “Bronson”). One study demonstrated that “death-qualified subjects evaluated the evidence in a way markedly more favorable to the prosecution than did excludables.” Thompson, supra at 103. That study also found that “relative to excludables, death-qualified subjects express less regret for erroneous convictions and more for erroneous acquittals,” id. at 109, “indicating that less evidence is necessary to convince death-qualified jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 111.
Another study reveals “a consistent pattern of differences between death-qualified and excludable jurors.” Fitzgerald, supra at 45. As compared with Witherspoon excludables, death qualified jurors are more punitive, less sensitive to procedural and constitutional guarantees, biased in favor of the prosecutor and against defense counsel, *175and more willing to ignore a judge’s instructions regarding pretrial publicity, in each case to a statistically significant degree. Id. The causal relationship between such attitudes and the tendency to convict requires no elaboration.
Like death qualified jurors, Witherspoon -excludables have been shown to share a set of interrelated attitudes toward the criminal justice system. These attitudes are distinct from those possessed by death qualified jurors, even those who express some opposition to capital punishment. Fitzgerald, supra; Bronson, supra; see Grisby v. Mabry, supra. Moreover, it has been established that persons who share such attitudes constitute a sizeable group within the community. Fitzgerald, supra; Bronson, supra; see Keeten v. Garrison, supra; Grigsby v. Mabry, supra. Thus, the effect of the death qualification process is to systematically exclude all members of a cognizable group. As a result of the death qualification process, a significant viewpoint goes unrepresented on the capital jury, rendering that jury unrepresentative.
The strong empirical evidence amassed in the wake of Witherspoon has been well summarized as follows:
The evidence ... clearly establishes that a juror’s attitude toward the death penalty is the most powerful known predictor of his overall predisposition in a capital criminal case. That evidence shows that persons who favor the death penalty are predisposed in favor of the prosecution and are uncommonly predisposed against the defendant. The evidence shows that death penalty attitudes are highly correlated with other criminal justice attitudes. Generally, those who favor the death penalty are more likely to trust prosecutors, distrust defense counsel, to believe the state’s witnesses, and to disapprove of certain of the accepted rights of defendants in criminal cases. A jury so selected will not, therefore, be composed of a cross section of the community. Rather, it will be composed of a group of persons who are uncommonly predisposed to favor the prosecution, a jury “organized to convict.” Grisby v. Mabry, supra at 1273.
*176In view of this compelling evidence of the unfairness of our present system, I cannot accept the execution of a death sentence resulting from such a process. The interest of justice cries out against the inequity of our present situation and our sense of fairness should respond. Appellant is entitled to a new trial before an impartial and representative jury.

. Trial by jury shall be as heretofore, and the right thereof remain inviolate.
Pa. Const. Art. I, § 6.
In all criminal prosecutions the accused hath a right to be heard by himself and his counsel, to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against him, to meet the witnesses face to face, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and, in prosecutions by indictment or information, a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the vicinage; he cannot be compelled to give evidence against himself, nor can he be deprived of his life, liberty, or property, unless by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land.
Pa. Const. Art. I, § 9.

. The study’s analysis of its subject sample’s characteristics revealed the following:
The subject sample was fairly representative of the suburban upper-middleclass community surrounding Stanford University, except that males and minorities were under-represented. The sample was 93% white, comprising 35.4% males and 64.6% females. The average age of subjects was 43, and 64.4% of the sample was currently employed outside the home. Married persons were 46% of the sample; 25% were single, 19% divorced, 4% separated, and 6% widowed. The median educational level was slightly less than a baccalaureate degree. Registered Democrats were 45.3% of the sample, Republicans 33.5% and unregistered 6.8%, with the remainder divided among Independent voters and small parties. In the category of religious affiliation, 35% listed themselves as Protestant, 17% as Catholic, 9% as Jewish, 25% listed no affiliation, and 14% listed other religions. Finally, 45% of the sample had previously done jury duty, while 36% had actually served on juries.
Cowan, Thompson & Ellsworth, The Effects of Death Qualification on Jurors’ Predisposition to Convict and on the Quality of Deliberation, 8 Law & Human Behavior 53, 67 (1984) (hereinafter “Cowan").

. Cowan, supra at 68, states: "This difference is highly significant ( 2(1) = 7.46, p <.01) and indicates that a departure from representativeness created by the process of restricting juries in capital cases to death-qualified jurors creates a bias against defendants in death penalty trials.” A significance level of p <.01 indicates a probability of 99 *174percent that the difference observed is real rather than the product of chance.