Court Opinion

ID: 9492365
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:39:33.206392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:16.420321
License: Public Domain

BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached in this case, although I do not agree with the lead opinion’s reason for concluding that we cannot entertain Spearman’s challenge to the jury selection plan. I would not write separately, however, were that my only disagreement with the lead opinion. I write separately because I take strong exception to my colleague’s essay lambasting this court’s opinion in United States v. Ovalle, 136 F.3d 1092 (6th Cir.1998). The lead opinion’s exercise in polemics is not only unseemly — Ovalle is, after all, the law of this circuit, and the full court declined to grant a request to rehear the case en banc; the lead opinion’s philippic is substantively incorrect as a matter of law and has virtually nothing to do with the case before us.
First, our decision in Ovalle is not relevant to the case before us here because, as the record demonstrates,1 Marktray *757Spearman never raised before the trial court any challenge — under Ovalle or on any other ground — to the jury selection plan. The sum total of Marktray Spear-man’s trial court action with regard to the jury array was to join in “remarks” made by his co-defendant’s counsel after the jury had been selected, indicating “concerns” and “a problem” with the fact that the jury array from which the petit jury had just been chosen contained only four black jurors. Trial courts do not rule on “concerns” or “problems.” Trial courts rule on motions and objections. Having neither made any motion nor raised any specific objection to the jury plan or the array, Spearman simply did not raise any cognizable challenge of any kind to the jury selection plan prior to his trial.2
Because the lead opinion’s discussion of Ovalle is entirely irrelevant to the case before us, I would not ordinarily be drawn into a discussion of it; Ovalle is a closed book. But, because my colleague’s denunciation of Ovalle is so seriously and substantively incorrect, I cannot leave unremarked his unwarranted attack on the Ovalle panel’s decision. First, the lead opinion denounces the Ovalle panel for holding that the jury selection plan for the Eastern District of Michigan substantially violated the JSSA and was unconstitutional because it excluded non-African Americans from the jury wheel solely on the basis of their race. Because Ovalle does not address the issue of adequate representation of African Americans on the jury array, the lead opinion contends, it limits challenges to the jury selection plan to those brought by non-African Americans, effectively precludes African Americans from making any challenge to the constitutionality of that jury selection plan, and leaves African American defendants without any relief.3 *758In my view the lead opinion’s reading of Ovalle is indefensible. Before the court in Ovalle was a timely claim supported by direct evidence in the record that the jury selection plan required the exclusion of some Hispanics from jury service solely because of their race. We held that a defendant who timely challenges a jury selection plan under the JSSA and/or the Fifth Amendment may proceed along one of two evidentiary routes: (1) by showing underrepresentation of an identifiable group, the defendant may establish a pri-ma facie presumption of intentional discrimination which the government may rebut; or (2) by using direct evidence of exclusion of an identifiable group, the defendant may demonstrate that the jury selection process was not race-neutral. Id. at 1099, 1104-05. We concluded that the plan at issue required the exclusion from the jury wheel of some non-African Americans, including Hispanics, solely on the basis of their race. We held that although the government has a compelling interest in ensuring that jury pools represent a fair cross-section of the community, the plan’s use of race to exclude potential jurors from the jury wheel, albeit in an effort to further that compelling interest, was a means not narrowly tailored to achieve that end.
Because the issue was not before us, we did not address the issue of whether the jury selection plan was unconstitutional in any other respect. We explicitly said, however, citing Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 502, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972) (“Illegal and unconstitutional jury selection procedures cast doubt on the integrity of the whole judicial process.”), that “[w]hen the government’s jury selection plan discriminates against an identifiable group of citizens, both the defendant and those citizens who are excluded suffer an injury in fact — the defendant is denied ‘neutral jury selection procedures’ and the excluded citizens are denied an opportunity to participate in an important civic requirement.” Ovalle, 136 F.3d at 1103. Nothing in Ovalle limits challenges to the jury selection process in the Eastern District of Michigan to the grounds on which we invalidated the jury selection plan in that case. Nor is Ovalle somehow “unduly circumscribed ... in its application,” as the lead opinion complains. Nothing in Ovalle suggests that “the African-American defendant who bases his challenge to the jury array under Ovalle is effectively left without any relief.” Nothing in Ovalle requires that the defendant challenging the jury array be of a particular race, or requires that the race-selection preference at issue involve any particular race. Indeed, Ovalle recognizes that any defendant of any race has the right to challenge the jury selection process and to show that the jury was not selected in a race-neutral fashion, id. at 1103.
The lead opinion’s attack on the Ovalle decision is substantively incorrect in a second significant respect. Citing those well-known civil cases in which a federal court has exercised its power of equitable jurisdiction to remedy a governmental institution’s constitutional violation, the lead opinion asserts:
[T]he Ovalle court should have invoked its equitable jurisdiction ... and considered the continuing constitutional violation left in the wake of its decision; and it should have remanded the case with instructions to the Eastern District of Michigan to devise a jury selection process that is constitutional as applied to all races and ethnic groups, while retaining jurisdiction to insure that the Eastern District so complied.
*759The equitable jurisdiction afforded to a federal court is broad enough to have allowed the Ovalle court to have considered the plan at issue as applied to blacks under the Sixth Amendment right to a fair cross section of the community, as well as to have remanded the case with instructions to remedy the constitutionally infirm jury selection process which was left in place by virtue of the court’s decision.
To suggest that this criminal appeal should be treated as a civil action for equitable relief, and used as a mechanism to invoke this court’s equitable jurisdiction to impose an injunctive remedy simply is unprecedented. Not only does it ignore the statutory framework provided in the JSSA for devising and implementing jury selection plans for the United States District Courts, see 28 U.S.C. § 1863, and the specific statutory provisions for relief where there is a substantial failure to comply with the JSSA’s requirements, see 28 U.S.C. § 1867, it goes well beyond the jurisdiction of this court, which in a criminal appeal, is limited to review of the final decision of the district court. See 18 U.S.C. § 1291.

. On the morning that jury selection began for the trial of Marklray Spearman and his brother and co-defendant, Edward O. Spear-man, Edward Spearman's counsel apparently expressed to the trial judge some unrecorded "concern” about his belief that there were very few African-Amei-icans in the jury pool. After the jury selection was completed, Ed*757ward Spearman’s counsel stated on the record,
Prior to beginning jury selection this morning we met in chambers and I brought my concerns to the Court’s attention regarding the composition of the jury pool. As it turns out, we had four black jurors among all the jurors that we talked to today. And I indicated to the Court that I had a problem with the composition of the jury pool.
And I was told I would be given the opportunity to put that on the record. And so I’m just taking this opportunity now before we leave for the day to put that on the record.
Marktray Spearman’s counsel then said, "I have nothing to say, other than I join in counsel’s remarks, Your Honor.” Counsel for the Government opined, in response, that within (he past couple of years, jurors had been pulled from drivers' license lists as well as from voter registration lists, which prior to that time had been the sole source of names for the jury pool. Government counsel then stated,
But since counsel has raised it, the reason I'm bringing it up is that if there was in general a challenge to the panel that was intended, then I would argue that this is tardy, if you will. That’s something that could have been done at an earlier point in time.
It's difficult for me to simply — to respond to such a generalization without knowing what the supposed authority is and exactly what the legal theory is, Your Honor.

. In Ovalle, we permitted the defendants Ovalle to raise their challenge to the jury selection plan for the first time on appeal, but only because their co-defendants had, in the same proceedings, timely challenged the plan. We expressly stated:
We emphasize that it is only because the O valles’ codefendants Canales and Garcia raised a timely objection to the seating of the grand and petit juries that the Ovalles are permitted the benefit of this decision. Had Canales and Garcia not raised these objections prior to trial, all of the appellants would be barred from raising such an objection for the first time on appeal or in a collateral proceeding attacking their convictions since the objection would be waived by the failure to object prior to trial. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 12(b)(2).
Ovalle, 136 F.3d at 1109.

. The lead opinion goes so far as to make the statement, citing to our unpublished opinion in United States v. Carr, 1999 WL 211928 (6th Cir.1999), "To add insult to this injury, the Ovalle decision is being interpreted as holding that the plan which it found to be constitutionally infirm as applied to what the court termed ‘non-blacks,’ was constitutionally sound as applied to blacks, without any empirical data being examined upon which to base this interpretation.” Carr did no such thing. Carr held that because the defendant had failed to raise a timely challenge to the *758jury selection plan invalidated by Ovalle, he had waived his right to make such a challenge; because the defendant claimed that ineffective assistance of counsel was "cause,” the court held that, even if he had shown cause, he must also demonstrate "actual prejudice,” and that there was absolutely no evidence of actual prejudice in the record. The court noted that since the jury selection plan the defendant complained of excluded non-black jurors from the jury wheel, and since the defendant was himself black, it was difficult to envision how that selection plan could have caused him actual prejudice.