Court Opinion

ID: 9845857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:29:31.379504+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:23.750358
License: Public Domain

Justice EXUM
dissenting.
General Statute 15A-2000 contemplates a bifurcated trial procedure wherein the jury’s determination of a defendant’s guilt or innocence in a capital case is separate.and independent from its later imposition of punishment should guilt be found. Under these circumstances, to permit the state to challenge an unlimited number of veniremen at the guilt phase of the trial for no “cause” other than that they would refuse to consider capital punishment at the sentencing phase works a systematic exclusion from jury service of that class of persons whose opposition to the death penalty precludes their vote for its imposition. Such an exclusion attains constitutional significance when it is shown that the members of the class excluded tend to share a commonality of in*140terests and attitudes not represented on the remaining jury panel. I believe that defendant’s evidence in this case has sufficiently demonstrated that persons who strongly oppose the death penalty constitute a group “cognizable” for purposes of jury selection analysis. The state has failed to provide adequate justification for the purposeful exclusion of this group on the guilt phase of the trial. The result is that defendant has been deprived, on the guilt phase of the case, of a venire composed of a fair and representative cross section of the community in violation of his constitutional jury trial rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and by Article I, Section 24, of the North Carolina Constitution. Consequently, I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion which holds to the contrary and vote for a new trial.
“It is part of the established tradition in the use of juries as instruments of public justice that the jury be a body truly representative of the community.” Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 130 (1940). Community representation is required because the very purpose of the jury system is to temper the application of the law with the “commonsense judgment of the community.” Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 530 (1975). Thus, in a criminal case, “the essential feature of a jury obviously lies in the interposition between the accused and his accuser of the commonsense judgment of a group of laymen, and in the community participation and shared responsibility that results from that group’s determination of guilt or innocence.” Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 100 (1970). It is for this reason that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial1 guarantees the selection of a petit jury from “a representative cross section of the community.” Taylor v. Louisiana, supra at 528. No less, I believe, can be said of the jury trial guarantee in Article I, Section 24, of the North Carolina Constitution.
There is, of course, no constitutional requirement that a petit jury actually chosen from a representative venire provide a perfect mirror of the community’s diversity. The right to a jury trial is not a right to have every jury contain representatives of all the economic, social, religious, racial, political, and geographic *141groups of the community. But it is a right to have prospective jurors selected “without systematic and intentional exclusion of any of these groups.” Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217, 220 (1946). The Sixth Amendment comprehends at the least a set of jury selection procedures which will ensure “a fair possibility for obtaining a representative cross section of the community.” Williams v. Florida, supra at 100. (Emphasis supplied.) This possibility is destroyed by any process which leads to the systematic exclusion of “identifiable segments playing major roles in the community.” Taylor v. Louisiana, supra at 530; see also Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 500 (1972); State v. Robertson, 284 N.C. 549, 552, 202 S.E. 2d 157, 160 (1974).
Duren v. Missouri, — U.S. —, 58 L.Ed. 2d 579 (1979), held, as the majority notes, that in order for a defendant to make out a fair cross section violation under the Sixth Amendment he must show, id. at —, 58 L.Ed. 2d at 587:
“(1) That the group allowed to be excluded is a ‘distinctive’ group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this under-representation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.”
Systematic exclusion means “inherent in the particular jury-selection process utilized.” Id. at —, 58 L.Ed. 2d at 588. Unlike equal protection challenges to jury selection based on discrimination, which require a showing of a discriminatory purpose, a Sixth Amendment fair cross section challenge requires only the showing of a systematic disproportion of the distinctive group alleged to have been excluded. No discriminatory purpose is required. “|I]n Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section cases, systematic disproportion itself demonstrates an infringement of the defendant’s interest in a jury chosen from a fair community cross-section. The only remaining question is whether there is adequate justification for this infringement.” Id. at —, n. 26, 58 L.Ed. 2d at 589, n. 26.
*142The challenges for cause allowed in this case effected a systematic exclusion from the venire2 of all persons whose strength of opposition to the death penalty was such that under no circumstances could they vote to impose capital punishment. The relevant inquiry is whether such persons comprise as a class an “identifiable segment” of the community, the exclusion of which denies defendant a jury selected from a representative venire.
For the purpose of jury selection analysis, the cognizability of any group depends largely upon (1) whether the group members share a common perspective or outlook on human events, and (2) if so, whether the exclusion of the group from jury service will tend to result in jury deliberations significantly deprived of the group’s perspective.3 Since “the counterbalancing of various biases is critical to the accurate application of the common sense of the community to the facts of any given case,” *143Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 223, 234 (1978), it is the effect of group exclusion which may work an injury of constitutional dimension:
“When any large and identifiable segment of the community is excluded from jury service, the effect is to remove from the jury room qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience, the range of which is unknown and perhaps unknowable. It is not necessary to assume that the excluded group will consistently vote as a class in order to conclude, as we do, that their exclusion deprives the jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance in any case that may be presented.” Peters v. Kiff, supra, 407 U.S. at 503-04.
By similar reasoning, this Court has recognized that even the complete exclusion of a group or class from the jury venire may be permissible under the Sixth Amendment and Article I, Section 24, of the North Carolina Constitution “so long as there is no reasonable basis for the conclusion that the ineligible group or class would bring to the deliberations of the jury a point of view not otherwise represented upon it.” State v. Knight, 269 N.C. 100, 104, 152 S.E. 2d 179, 182 (1967). (Emphasis supplied.)
The uncontradicted evidence presented by the defendant in this case demonstrates that persons opposed to capital punishment have for many years constituted a substantial percentage of our population.4 Moreover, the narrower class of those whose opposition to the death penalty would prevent their consideration as *144jurors of its imposition has also comprised a substantial minority of the population.5 The evidence further shows that these persons generally exhibit attitudinal characteristics markedly different from those shared by people who favor the death penalty as an instrument of the criminal law. All of the available data suggest that persons who are strongly opposed to capital punishment tend also to be less authoritarian,6 more liberal in their political attitudes,7 less punitive in their legal attitudes,8 and less likely to endorse “discrimination against minority groups, restrictions on civil liberties, and violence for achieving social goals”9 than persons who favor the death penalty. The attitudinal differences become even more distinct with regard to those whose scruples would prevent their vote for capital punishment regardless of the evidence in the case.10 The data are remarkably consistent, furthermore, in showing that attitudes about capital punishment cut unequally across various demographic lines. Opposition to the death penalty, for example, is more pronounced among women than men, non-whites than whites, high school and college graduates than non-graduates, and lower income groups than higher.11
*145Viewed in connection with the facts of this case, the evidence is compelling, moreover, that the exclusion of venirerñen unalterably opposed to the imposition of capital punishment results in the systematic under-representation of black jurors. The results of a 1971 Harris Poll indicate that such an exclusion would deny jury service to thirty-five percent of blacks but only twenty-one percent of whites.12 Uncontradicted evidence in the record before us shows that a far greater percentage of blacks harbor intense opposition to the death penalty than do whites.13 This evidence is borne out by the results of the voir dire challenges in the instant case. Of the 57 persons in the jury venire who were examined for possible service on the petit jury which tried defendant, 15 (26%) were black. Of these 15, 9 were permitted to be challenged for cause on the ground that they would under no circumstances vote to impose the death penalty. Two white veniremen were challenged for cause on the same ground. The state’s challenges for cause thus resulted in the exclusion of 60% of the black citizens examined on the venire and approximately 5% of the white citizens so examined.
I believe that the cumulative weight of the evidence just discussed supports the conclusion that the group of citizens automatically excluded from the venire in this case by the state’s challenges for cause constitutes (1) an identifiable segment of the community with (2) distinctive characteristics of attitude and outlook which in any fair system of criminal justice ought to be allowed a chance for representation in the jury’s deliberations. At the very least, the evidence prof erred by defendant conclusively demonstrates that the challenges for cause here allowed systematically exclude a disproportionate number of blacks. There can be no doubt that black citizens define a cognizable group for jury selection purposes. See, e.g., Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124 (1971), wherein the Supreme Court found no occasion to emphasize the question of cognizability, despite belabored findings by the district court on the issue.
*146A cursory reading of Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968) and its companion decision, Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U.S. 543 (1968), might suggest that these cases foreclose the conclusions I reach here. I do not so read these cases. In both Witherspoon and Bumper the state procedure under consideration involved capital cases in which the same jury decided the issues of guilt and punishment in a single proceeding.14 In each case the Supreme Court denied a contention that a guilty verdict could not be constitutionally returned by a petit jury selected from a venire from which all persons who had “scruples” against the death penalty were challenged for cause. In Witherspoon the Court did overturn on due process grounds a sentence of death rendered by such a jury. In Bumper the Court overturned the verdict of guilty because unconstitutionally seized evidence had been introduced. While the argument that the jury chosen from the venire was rendered unrepresentative by improperly allowed challenges for cause might have been suggested in these cases, the principal contention in Bumper and Witherspoon was to the effect that the challenges for cause resulted in petit juries which were “conviction prone” or “biased in favor of conviction” and that defendants were thereby denied due process of law. The Supreme Court concluded that the data presented were simply too “tentative and fragmentary” to conclude either “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.” Witherspoon v. Illinois, supra, 391 U.S. at 517, 518. The clear implication of this language is that a stronger evidentiary showing in the future might establish that a jury from which those unalterably opposed to the imposition of capital punishment are excluded is a jury less than representative on the issue of guilt or biased in favor of the prosecution.
In sustaining Witherspoon’s due process argument on the question of punishment, the Court noted, 391 U.S. at 520:
*147“If the State had excluded only those prospective jurors who stated in advance of trial that they would not even consider returning a verdict of death, it could argue that the resulting jury was simply ‘neutral’ with respect to penalty.”
It then added, at n. 18:
“Even so, 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. If he were to succeed in that effort, the question would then arise whether the State’s interest in submitting the penalty issue to a jury capable of imposing capital punishment may be vindicated at the expense of the defendant’s interest in a completely fair determination of guilt or innocence — given the possibility of accommodating both interests by means of a bifurcated trial, using one jury to decide guilt and another to fix punishment. That problem is not presented here, however, and we intimate no view as to its proper resolution.”
Defendant argues strenuously that he has met the challenge laid down in Witherspoon to demonstrate that a petit jury selected as this one was in accordance with the Witherspoon standard is, indeed, biased in favor of guilt. The studies and data presented in this case do consistently and forcefully suggest that a jury culled of those who would not vote for the death penalty is in fact a jury prone to convict on the guilt phase.15 Moreover, despite intimations in the majority opinion to the contrary, the evidence adduced in this case on the “guilt prone” tendencies of a Witherspoon-qüsliíieá jury is substantially greater than that which was available to the Supreme Court in Witherspoon or Bumper, or to this Court in our own prior decisions.16 Defendant’s argument and the new data upon which it rests warrants careful review and I commend it for consideration by our General Assembly. I do not choose to reach its merits, however, because I believe that defendant has made a sufficient showing, not made in *148Witherspoon or Bumper, that the jury in this case was, on the guilt phase of the trial, substantially unrepresentative of the community’s conscience.
This, however, is not the end of the inquiry. Even systematic exclusion of identifiable groups may be constitutionally permissible if “a significant state interest be manifestly and primarily advanced by those aspects of the jury-selection process, such as exemption criteria, that result in the disproportionate exclusion of a distinctive group.” Duren v. Missouri, supra, — U.S. at —, 58 L.Ed. 2d at 589. The right to a representative jury cannot be overcome merely because the state can show some reason for the exclusions which render the jury venire non-representative. Taylor v. Louisiana, supra, 419 U.S. at 534; Duren v. Missouri, supra, — U.S. at —, 58 L.Ed. 2d at 589. The burden is upon the state to show that the “attainment of a fair cross-section [is] incompatible with a significant state interest.” Duren v. Missouri, supra, — U.S. at —, 58 L.Ed. 2d at 589-90.
The state no less than the defendant has a significant interest in obtaining a jury composed of persons who can sufficiently put aside personal biases to follow and apply the applicable law. Such an interest is normally advanced by excluding “for cause” those jurors who cannot. Indeed, the very purpose of allowing unlimited challenges for cause is to enable the parties to obtain a fair and impartial jury. State v. Allred, 275 N.C. 554, 169 S.E. 2d 833 (1969); State v. English, 164 N.C. 498, 80 S.E. 72 (1913). General Statute 15A-1212(8) permits the excusal for cause of any potential juror who, “[a]s a matter of conscience, regardless of the facts and circumstances, would he unable to render a verdict with respect to the charge in accordance with the law. . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) General Statute 15A-1212(9) further provides for a challenge to any potential juror who “[f]or any other cause is unable to render a fair and impartial verdict(Emphasis supplied.) It is thus the venireman’s demonstrated inability to maintain impartiality and to follow the law which properly triggers a party’s right to challenge for cause. “jT]t is the fixedness of the [biased] opinion . . . which constitutes the exception”; the mere expression of an opinion which might favor one side or the other does not constitute grounds for a challenge for cause absent further inquiry into the ‘fact of favour or indifferency.” State v. Benton, 19 N.C. (2 Dev. & Bat.) 196, 213 (1836). (Emphasis original.) *149Where the voir dire inquiry elicits from a potential juror the fact that his biases are such as to preclude his rendering an impartial verdict, he is properly excused from the venire. A venire from which such jurors have been removed by challenges for cause is constitutionally permissible even if it is no longer representative of the community.
In Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586 (1978), the state was rightly permitted to challenge all jurors who stated that they were so opposed to capital punishment that “they could not sit, listen to the evidence, listen to the law, [and] make their determination solely upon the evidence and the law without considering the fact that capital punishment might be imposed.” Id. at 595. The Supreme Court held that the right to a representative jury did not include the right “to be tried by jurors who have explicitly indicated an inability to follow the law and instructions of the trial judge.” Id. at 596-97. (Emphasis supplied.)
Lockett did not involve the kind of challenge for cause permitted here. No challenged juror in the present case stated that because of opposition to the death penalty he or she could not under any circumstances return a guilty verdict. All simply stated that they could not vote for the imposition of the death penalty. These jurors, therefore, did not demonstrate any bias on any of the critical issues in the guilt phase of the trial. Their bias related only to the sentencing phase. The state has not demonstrated that the jurors challenged for cause because of opposition to the death penalty could not have followed the law and been impartial on the guilt phase of the case. Unless, therefore, the state has a significant interest in having precisely the same jurors who determine guilt also determine punishment, a fair cross section violation has been shown because of the systematic exclusion of those unalterably opposed to imposition of the death penalty.
Given the alternatives already provided by G.S. 15A-2000, I do not believe such a significant interest exists. This statute provides for a bifurcated trial in capital cases.17 The first phase is for the purpose of determining guilt; the second, punishment. While *150the statute seems to contemplate that the same jury which determines guilt should ordinarily also determine punishment, it does provide that if before the punishment phase “any juror dies, becomes incapacitated or disqualified, or is discharged for any reason, an alternate juror shall become a part of the jury and serve in all respects as those selected on the regular trial panel.” G.S. 15A-2000(a)(2). (Emphasis supplied.) Furthermore the statute provides that if the jury which determines guilt is unable “to reconvene” for the punishment phase, “the trial judge shall impanel a new jury to determine the issue of punishment.” Id.
Thus the bifurcated trial procedure provides two reasonable alternatives to having precisely the same jurors pass on both guilt and punishment. If the petit jury contains some members who, qualified on the guilt phase, were because of the strength of their opposition to capital punishment disqualified on the sentencing phase, alternate jurors qualified on the sentencing phase could be empaneled at the outset to hear both phases. These alternate jurors would not, however, participate in deliberations on guilt. If a guilty verdict were returned, these alternates would replace, on the sentencing phase of the case, their counterparts disqualified on this phase. Another alternative provided by the statute is to empanel a different jury for the punishment phase if the jury on the guilt phase was “unable to reconvene” because all of its members were disqualified on the question of punishment. In this latter circumstance nothing would prevent the second, punishment jury from hearing the guilt phase of the trial simultaneously with the guilt phase jury. This would avoid the necessity of reintroducing evidence on the punishment phase.
If North Carolina is to maintain the death penalty as an instrument of the criminal law, this Court should insist that in cases in which this penalty may be exacted a defendant’s constitutional rights be scrupulously protected. None of these rights should be withered to insure a more expeditious proceeding. The fundamental right to a fairly representative jury is essential to the integrity of the fact finding process. The procedures I have suggested would better serve to guarantee that right. The extra burdens on the state attendant to these procedures seem a small price to pay in the context of proceedings aimed at determining whether the law’s ultimate penalty, death, shall be imposed.

. The Sixth Amendment is applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968).

. Duren v. Missouri, supra, and the earlier fair cross section case of Taylor v. Louisiana, supra, 419 U.S. 522, were concerned only with the selection of the venire itself. The Coort had only to point to the large discrepancies in those cases between the number of women which appeared in the venires and the number in the community at large to find the element of unreasonable under-representation. There was no need for further analysis in either case. Where, however, as here, the venire contains at the outset a presumably representative number of persons who could not vote to impose the death sentence and the state is allowed to exercise unlimited challenges for cause to reduce that number to zero, the effect is the same as if those persons had been denied access to the venire in the first place. It is the effective mode of exclusion, not the time of its application, which is constitutionally significant. “All that the Constitution forbids ... is systematic exclusion of identifiable segments of the community from jury panels and from the juries ultimately drawn from those panels. . . .” Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404, 413 (1972). (Emphasis supplied.)

. For instance, in United States v. Guzman, 337 F. Supp. 140 (S.D.N.Y. 1972), aff'd 468 F. 2d 1245 (2d Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 410 U.S. 937 (1973), the trial court defined a “cognizable” group as one which (1) has a definite composition according to some definitive quality or attribute, (2) maintains a cohesive set of “attitudes or ideas or experience,” and (3) represents a “community of interest” which may not be represented by other segments of society. 337 F. Supp. at 143-44. Cases from other jurisdictions have similarly examined group cognizability in terms of attitudinal significance. See, e.g., United States v. Butera, 420 F. 2d 564 (1st Cir. 1970) (The “less educated” comprise “a sufficiently large group with sufficiently distinct views and attitudes that its diluted presence on the jury pool requires some explanation by the government.”); Rubio v. Superior Court of San Joaquin County, 154 Cal. Rptr. 734, 593 P. 2d 595 (1979) (Members of a cognizable group share “a common social or psychological outlook on human events” not otherwise represented on a jury from which they are excluded.); Mooney v. State, 243 Ga. 373, 254 S.E. 2d 337 (1979) (Persons 18-21 years of age do not constitute a *143cognizable group absent a showing that their “attitudinal segment” is unique or significant.). Compare State v. Jenison, 405 A. 2d 3 (R.I. 1979) (College presidents, professors, students, and tutors are recognized as a cognizable group without more; the Court need not “speculate on the particular qualities shared by this group that are missing from the spectrum of views on a jury that excludes its members.”).

. Dr. Hans Zeisel, Professor Emeritus of Law and Sociology at the University of Chicago School of Law, testified to various Gallup polls and other surveys which show that public support in the United States for the death penalty has fluctuated markedly. In 1960 it was 52%; 1965, 45%; 1966, 42%; the average percentage of people now favoring the death penalty is 70%. Professor Zeisel, a lawyer and sociologist, is a renowned and respected scholar in the area of the interaction of the discipline of law and sociology. His and Kalven’s definitive work, The American Jury (1966), has been regularly cited by the United States Supreme Court and was heavily relied on in Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 223 (1978).

. A 1971 Harris Poll indicated that of the 36°/o of the population then opposed to the death penalty, slightly less than two-thirds (or 23% of the population) would be willing to state that as a member of the jury they would refuse to vote for the death penalty under any circumstances. The poll is reported and analyzed in White, “The Constitutional Invalidity of Convictions Imposed by Death-Qualified Jurors,” 58 Cornell L. Rev. 1176 (1973).

. Boehm, “Mr. Prejudice, Miss Sympathy, and the Authoritarian Personality: An Application of Psychological Measuring Techniques to the Problem of Jury Bias,” 1968 Wise. L. Rev. 734.

. R. Crosson, “An Investigation into Certain Personality Variables Among Capital Trial Jurors,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 1966.

. Jurow, “New Data on the Effect of a ‘Death Qualified’ Jury on the Guilt Determination Process.” 84 Harv. L. Rev. 567 (1971). See also White, supra note 5; Zeisel, “Some Data on Juror Attitudes Toward Capital Punishment,” University of Chicago Center for Studies in Criminal Justice, 1968.

. Bedau and Pierce, Capital Punishment in the United States 134-35 (1976).

. See White, supra note 5, at 1186 n. 54.

. See generally Vidmar and Ellsworth, “Public Opinion and the Death Penalty,” 26 Stan. L. Rev. 1245 (1974); 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); White, supra note 5. The relevant studies are summarized in Girsh, “The Witherspoon Question: The Social Science and the Evidence,” 35 NLADA Briefcase 99 (September 1978).

. See White, supra note 5, at 1194.

. Professor Zeisel testified that opposition among black citizens to the death penalty has remained consistent at around 70%. See also Bronson, supra note 11, at 20; Vidmar and Ellsworth, supra note 11, at 1254 n. 38.

. The Illinois procedure applicable in Witherspoon permitted the jury to return in its discretion a verdict of death along with the determination of guilt. Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 38, § l-7(c)(1) (1967). The crime of rape charged in Bumper was punishable by death unless the jury returned a specific recommendation of life imprisonment “at the time of rendering its verdict in open court.” N.C.G.S. § 14-21 (1953).

. See generally the sources cited in notes 5-9, and note 11 supra.

. In addition to pre-Witherspoon studies, defendant in this case submitted for the trial court’s consideration studies by Zeisel, supra note 8; Boehm, supra note 6; Bronson, supra note 11; Jurow, supra note 8; and White, supra note 5. There is no indication in any of our previous cases that any of these sources were presented or considered.

. This procedure was not, as I have already shown, in use in either Illinois or North Carolina when Witherspoon and Bumper were considered by the United States Supreme Court. See text at note 14 supra.