Court Opinion

ID: 9473071
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:18:42.561133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:18.384082
License: Public Domain

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the judgment and in all of the opinion except that part dealing with the claim of due process denial in refusing to question prospective jurors about the possibility of racial bias. On that point I believe the majority opinion puts too restrictive a reading on the circumstances that may entitle a criminal defendant, as a matter of due process, to have prospective jurors so questioned. But because I further believe that the circumstances giving rise to the right were not demonstrated here under a proper application of the principle, I concur in the court’s conclusion that no due process denial was established.
As I read Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182, 101 S.Ct. 1629, 68 L.Ed.2d 22 (1981); Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U.S. 589, 96 S.Ct. 1017, 47 L.Ed.2d 258 (1976); and Ham v. South Carolina, 409 U.S. 524, 93 S.Ct. 848, 35 L.Ed.2d 46 (1973), in conjunction, they yield the following principles.
The fact alone that defendant is of a different race than the crime victim is not a circumstance giving rise to the due process right, Ristaino, 424 U.S. at 596, 597, 96 S.Ct. at 1021, 1022; nor is this altered by the nature of the ‘ crime charged or the punishment possible, see Ristaino, 424 U.S. at 596 n. 8, 96 S.Ct. at 1021 n. 8 (generally rejecting per se approach based upon non-case-specific factors such as violent nature of crime). But special circumstances giving rise to the right may be present in a case in which racial issues are “inextricably bound up with the conduct of the trial.” Id. at 597, 96 S.Ct. at 1021 (so interpreting basis of right recognized in Ham where racial prejudice against defendant was raised as defense on the merits). And, aside from specific trial issues, “more substantial indications [than race differences alone] of the likelihood of racial or ethnic prejudice affecting the jurors in a particular case” may trigger the right. Rosales-Lopez, 451 U.S. at 190, 101 S.Ct. at 1635 (dicta: constitutional test stated in applying broader supervisory rule for federal courts); see also Ristaino, 424 U.S. at 598, 96 S.Ct. at 1022 (constitutional right might arise not only from specific trial issues but from “racial factors ... of comparable significance”).
But as I read the majority opinion, it reads these decisions more restrictively in holding that only “special circumstances in the facts surrounding a particular trial” invoke the constitutional right, and that “the fact that a larger percentage of white victims’ assailants are executed” may not be such a special circumstance. If by this the majority is saying that only when Ham-type racial issues are bound up in the merits of a criminal trial can the due pro*355cess right arise, I cannot agree. Obviously, if this were correct, it would follow that factors related solely to likely juror attitudes independent of specific issues in a particular case — including statistical demonstrations of jury propensities — would always be irrelevant.
But, as indicated, I do not read the authoritative Supreme Court decisions to limit the right to Ham -type situations. I believe that not only specific racial issues in the particular case but a demonstrated likelihood of racial prejudice affecting the “particular” jury, irrespective of specific issues, may invoke the constitutional right. And I would not be prepared flatly to rule out as possible means, among others, of demonstrating such a likelihood scientifically sound statistical evidence related to community attitudes as reflected in jury performance in sufficient samples of comparable cases.
But to demonstrate that such a propensity was sufficiently likely to afflict the “particular” jury in a given ease, I think the evidence offered — whatever its source and content — would have to be much more fo-cussed in time and geographical terms upon the very community from which the particular jury venire is drawn than was the evidence here advanced by Turner. That evidence consisted only of the following:
(1) A study by Bowers and Pierce of post-Furman v. Georgia data collected through December 1977 from Georgia, Florida, Texas, Alabama and Ohio, which revealed that 14.59% of blacks killing whites received the death penalty, compared to 2.66% of whites killing whites, 0.54% of blacks killing blacks, and 0.50% of whites killing blacks;
(2) a 1983 study by Gross and Mauro of data through 1980 from Oklahoma, North Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia and Arkansas. The Virginia data focused on 19 cases out of 1389 criminal homicides, these eases being chosen to control for attitudes about the degree of atrocity involved in the homicide. The statistical analysis of Virginia data showed 8.2% of blacks killing whites receiving the death sentence compared to 1.3% of the whites killing whites and 0.60% of blacks killing blacks. No white had received the death penalty for killing a black under Virginia’s 1977 capital punishment statute.
This evidence, whatever its general statistical reliability as a measure of community attitudes over the wide expanses of area and time covered, is simply too diffused in its depiction of likely community, hence juror, attitudes in this particular case to invoke the right. But I am not prepared to hold, as I think the majority opinion, implies, that the requisite likelihood, hence the due process right, can never be shown by statistically sound evidence of particular community attitudes as reflected in sufficiently contemporary jury verdicts in comparable situations.