Azania v. State
Decision Date | 22 November 2002 |
Docket Number | No. 02S00-0009-SD-538.,02S00-0009-SD-538. |
Parties | Zolo Agona AZANIA, Appellant (Petitioner Below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Respondent Below). |
Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
Jesse A. Cook, Deputy Public Defender, Terre Haute, IN, Michael E. Deutsch, Deputy Public Defender, Chicago, IL, Attorney for Appellant.
William Goodman, Jaykumar A. Menon, New York, NY, Monica Foster, Indianapolis, IN, Brief of Amici Curiae.
Steve Carter, Attorney General of Indiana, Christopher L. Lafuse, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.
ON APPEAL FROM THE DENIAL OF SUCCESSIVE PETITION FOR POST-CONVICTION RELIEF
BOEHM, Justice.
Zolo Agona Azania, formerly known as Rufus Averhart, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. In this appeal from the denial of his second petition for post-conviction relief, Azania argues that his death sentence must be vacated because the jury that recommended imposition of the death penalty was the product of a system for jury pool selection that systematically and materially reduced participation of African-American jurors.
In an ordinary lawsuit we would not find the irregularities in the Allen County jury selection process sufficient to require a reversal. The disproportionate reduction of African-Americans in the jury pool was, as the Chief Justice's dissent observes, the result of a "computer glitch," more precisely, a flawed program, not a hardware defect. But computer failures can have serious consequences, and this is an example of that. Because of the heightened need for public confidence in the integrity of a death penalty, we conclude that although the conviction was proper, the jury pool selection process was fundamentally flawed, and reversal of the death penalty and a new penalty phase or resentencing is required.
Factual and Procedural Background
Azania was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the 1981 slaying of Gary Police Lieutenant George Yaros in the course of a bank robbery.1 In 1984, this Court affirmed his conviction and sentence on direct appeal. Averhart v. State, 470 N.E.2d 666 (Ind.1984). Azania was denied post-conviction relief, and in a 1993 appeal from that ruling, this Court affirmed Azania's conviction but reversed his sentence, citing ineffective assistance of counsel at the sentencing phase and the failure of the prosecution to provide gunshot residue test results to the defense. Averhart v. State, 614 N.E.2d 924, 930 (Ind.1993).
After remand for a new penalty phase, Azania unsuccessfully moved to strike the entire jury pool on the ground that it did not represent a reasonable cross section of the community. A new jury was impaneled and it also recommended death. After the trial court again sentenced Azania to death, this Court affirmed the sentence on direct appeal. Azania v. State, 730 N.E.2d 646 (Ind.2000). Azania was then granted leave to file a successive petition for post-conviction relief on two grounds: newly discovered evidence, and alleged abnormalities in the Allen County jury pool selection system. Azania v. State, 738 N.E.2d 248 (Ind.2000). The successive post-conviction court denied relief, and this appeal followed.
The method by which jury pools are selected in Indiana is governed by statute. Indiana Code section 33-4-5-2(c) allows jury commissioners to use a computerized jury selection system, but requires that the system employed "must be fair and may not violate the rights of persons with respect to the impartial and random selection of prospective jurors." This Court long ago held that the purpose of the jury selection statute is to ensure that the method used to select a jury is not arbitrary and does not result in the systematic exclusion of any group. Shack v. State, 259 Ind. 450, 459-60, 288 N.E.2d 155, 162 (1972). Nevertheless, there is no requirement that any particular segment of the population be represented on every jury, Daniels v. State, 274 Ind. 29, 35, 408 N.E.2d 1244, 1247 (1980), and completely random selection of jurors is not required as long as the system used is impartial and not arbitrary. State ex rel. Burns v. Sharp, 271 Ind. 344, 348, 393 N.E.2d 127, 130 (1979). Minor irregularities will not constitute reversible error unless there is a showing of substantial prejudice to the accused's rights as a result of the irregularities. Porter v. State, 271 Ind. 180, 201, 391 N.E.2d 801, 816 (1979),overruled on other grounds. Despite these somewhat flexible standards, an accused is entitled to a trial by a jury selected in substantial compliance with the statute, and if there is a lack of substantial compliance, the accused need not show actual prejudice. Cross v. State, 272 Ind. 223, 226, 397 N.E.2d 265, 268 (1979); Wireman v. State, 432 N.E.2d 1343, 1354 (Ind.1982) (Hunter, J., dissenting); Rogers v. State, 428 N.E.2d 70, 72 (Ind.Ct.App.1981); Bagnell v. State, 413 N.E.2d 1072, 1075 (Ind.Ct. App.1980).
The computerized system used to select the jury pool for Azania's 1996 sentencing recommendation hearing was designed in 1980. The successive post-conviction court found that the system had four flaws, the net effect of which was exclusion of a number of jury pool members who resided in Wayne Township from the possibility of being called to serve. Specifically, in 1996, when Azania's penalty phase was retried, these problems excluded 4364 of 5013, or 87%, of Wayne Township voters from jury service. In that year, the countywide jury pool was 14,364.
The problem in Allen County's jury selection procedures may be readily stated in broad overview. The number of jurors needed for 1996 was first identified as 14,000. The program then selected 14,364 registered voters to be assigned a random number. Only persons assigned a number could be drawn for a panel. The assignment stopped after 10,000 voters had received numbers. Because the program worked through the voter list by township in alphabetical order, all of the excluded 4364 registered voters were Wayne Township residents. As a result, 87% of Wayne Township was excluded. This had a materially disproportionate effect on African-Americans because African-Americans comprised 8.5% of the total population of Allen County, and three fourths of that 8.5% resided in Wayne Township. The remainder of this Part I:B explains the details of how this occurred. Its legal implications are addressed in Part C.
The first problem resulted from a truncation feature embedded in the program since 1980. The program would first read the registered voter list and determine the total number of registered voters in the county and in each township. The program would then determine the percentage of all Allen County registered voters who resided in each township. Before each calendar year, the court administrator determined the desired number of jurors required for all Allen County courts for the entire year. Based upon the requested size of this "master pool," the program then determined the number of jurors it needed to select from each township to ensure proportional representation of that township in the master pool. The total voter list for the township was then to be divided into that number of "selection groups" by dividing the total number of registered voters in the township by the number of jurors needed from the township. One juror was then to be chosen from each group. This division rarely produced an integer (e.g., 21). In almost all cases, it produced a real number (e.g., 21.2439). The program then truncated this real number by eliminating everything after the decimal point and converting the real number (21.2439) into an integer (21). The program then used the integer, rather than the real number, to select groups, identifying the first 21 as group 1, then 22 through 42 as group 2, etc. By using the truncated integer, which was a fraction smaller than the real number, rather than rounding to the nearest integer, the program produced roughly 5% more groups than the requested size of the master pool. A random number was then used to select one juror from each group, producing a response in the range of 10,500 names to a request for 10,000 jurors. Thus, from the outset of the program in 1980, this truncation caused more voters than were requested to be chosen for assignment of a random number.2
Regardless of how many names were included on the master jury pool list, from the outset the program assigned random numbers—necessary for actual selection to serve—to only 10,000 voters. When the list exceeded 10,000 names, the effect of this was to cut the list off at 10,000. From 1980 to 1994, the court administrator requested annual master jury pools of 10,000 people. During that period, the approximately 500 excess jurors produced by the truncation feature were excluded from service, but only those 500 jurors were affected. In 1995, however, the requested number grew to 12,000 jurors, and the truncation feature added another 693, so 12,693 voters were selected. As a result of assigning a random number to only 10,000 jurors, 2693 of those jurors could not be called to serve. In 1996, the year of Azania's resentencing, the requested jury pool was 14,000, and the truncation feature added 364 names. As a result of the limitation to 10,000, 4364 of those did not receive random numbers and could not serve.
Finally, and importantly, the computer organized the county jury pool by townships in alphabetical order. This placed all Wayne Township jurors at the end of the list of 14,364. Thus, in each year since 1980 all of the excluded jury pool members were Wayne Township residents. The effect of these problems was not unfocused or randomly distributed over the county or over population groups. According to the 1990...
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