Berghuis v. Smith

• Decision Date: 30 March 2010
• Docket Number: No. 08–1402.,08–1402.
• Citation: 559 U.S. 314,176 L.Ed.2d 249,130 S.Ct. 1382
• Parties: Mary BERGHUIS, Warden, Petitioner, v. Diapolis SMITH.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

559 U.S. 314

130 S.Ct. 1382

176 L.Ed.2d 249

Mary BERGHUIS, Warden, Petitioner,

v.Diapolis SMITH.

No. 08–1402.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Jan. 20, 2010.

Decided March 30, 2010.

B. Eric Restuccia

, Solicitor General, Lansing, MI, for petitioner.

James Sterling Lawrence

, Royal Oak, MI, for respondent.

Michael A. Cox, Attorney General, B. Eric Restuccia

, Michigan Solicitor General, Counsel of Record, Lansing, MI, Joel D. McGormley, Division Chief, Appellate Division, State of Michigan, Timothy K. McMorrow, Special Assistant Attorney General, Appellate Chief, Kent County Prosecutor's Office, for petitioner.

James Sterling Lawrence

, Royal Oak, MI, for respondent.

Opinion

Justice GINSBURG

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Sixth Amendment secures to criminal defendants the right to be tried by an impartial jury drawn from sources reflecting a fair cross section of the community. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975)

. The question presented in this case is whether that right was accorded to respondent Diapolis Smith, an African–American convicted of second-degree murder by an all-white jury in Kent County, Michigan in 1993. At the time of Smith's trial, African–Americans constituted 7.28% of Kent County's jury-eligible population, and 6% of the pool from which potential jurors were drawn.

In Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979)

, this Court described three showings a criminal defendant must make to establish a prima facie violation of the Sixth Amendment's fair-cross-section requirement. He or she must show: “(1) that the group alleged 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 underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.” Id., at 364, 99 S.Ct. 664. The first showing is, in most cases, easily made; the second and third are more likely to generate controversy.

The defendant in Duren

readily met all three measures. He complained of the dearth of women in the Jackson County, Missouri, jury pool. To establish underrepresentation, he proved that women were 54% of the jury-eligible population, but accounted for only 26.7% of the persons summoned for jury service, and only 14.5% of the persons on the postsummons weekly venires from which jurors were drawn. To show the “systematic” cause of the underrepresentation, Duren pointed to Missouri's law exempting women from jury service, and to the manner in which Jackson County administered the exemption. Concluding that no significant state interest could justify Missouri's explicitly gender-based exemption , this Court held the law, as implemented in Jackson County, violative of the Sixth Amendment's fair-cross-section requirement.

We here review the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit holding that Smith “satisf[ied] the prima facie test established by Duren,

” and granting him habeas corpus relief, i.e., release from imprisonment absent a new trial commenced within 180 days of the Court of Appeals' order. 543 F.3d 326, 336 (2008). Despite marked differences between Smith's case and Duren's, and a cogent Michigan Supreme Court decision holding that Smith “ha[d] not shown ... systematic exclusion,” People v. Smith, 463 Mich. 199, 205, 615 N.W.2d 1, 3 (2000), the Sixth Circuit found the matter settled. Cognizant of the restrictions Congress placed on federal habeas review of state-court convictions, the Court of Appeals considered that a decision contrary to its own would “involv[e] an unreasonable application o [f] clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). 543 F.3d, at 335.

The Sixth Circuit erred in so ruling. No decision of this Court “clearly establishe[s]” Smith's entitlement to federal-court relief. According to the Sixth Circuit, Smith had demonstrated that a Kent County prospective-juror-assignment procedure, which Smith calls “siphoning,” “systematic[ally] exclu[ded]” African–Americans. Under this procedure, Kent County assigned prospective jurors first to local district courts, and, only after filling local needs, made remaining persons available to the countywide Circuit Court, which heard felony cases like Smith's. The Michigan Supreme Court, however, had rejected Smith's “siphoning” plea for lack of proof that the assignment procedure caused underrepresentation. Smith, 463 Mich., at 205, 615 N.W.2d, at 3.

As that determination was not at all unreasonable, the Sixth Circuit had no warrant to disturb it. See § 2254(d)(2).

In addition to renewal of his “siphoning” argument, Smith here urges that a host of factors combined to reduce systematically the number of African– Americans appearing on Kent County jury lists, for example, the Kent County court's practice of excusing people without adequate proof of alleged hardship, and the refusal of Kent County police to enforce orders for prospective jurors to appear. Brief for Respondent 53–54. Our decisions do not address factors of the kind Smith urges. We have cautioned, however, that “[t]he fair-cross-section principle must have much leeway in application.” Taylor, 419 U.S., at 537–538, 95 S.Ct. 692;

see id., at 537, 95 S.Ct. 692 (Court's holding that Sixth Amendment is violated by systematic exclusion of women from jury service “does not augur or authorize the fashioning of detailed jury-selection codes by federal courts.”).

I

A

On November 7, 1991, Christopher Rumbley was shot and killed during a bar brawl in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The bar was crowded at the time of the brawl, with 200–to–300 people on the premises. All patrons of the bar were African–American. The State charged Smith with the murder in Kent County Circuit Court.

Voir dire for Smith's trial took place in September 1993. The venire panel included between 60 and 100 individuals. The parties agree that, at most, three venire members were African–American. Smith unsuccessfully objected to the composition of the venire panel.

Smith's case proceeded to trial before an all-white jury. The case for the prosecution turned on the identity of the man who shot Rumbley. Thirty-seven witnesses from the bar, including Smith, testified at the trial. Of those, two testified that Smith fired the gun. Five testified that the shooter was not Smith, and the remainder made no identifications of the shooter. The jury convicted Smith of second- degree murder and possession of a firearm during a felony, and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.

B

On first appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered the trial court to conduct an evidentiary hearing on Smith's fair-cross-section claim. The hearing occurred in early 1998. Smith's evidence showed that Grand Rapids, the largest city in Kent County, was home to roughly 37% of Kent County's population, and to 85% of its African–American residents. Felony charges in Kent County were tried in a sole Circuit Court. Misdemeanors were prosecuted in 12 district courts, each covering a discrete geographical area. To fill the courts' venires, Kent County sent questionnaires to prospective jurors. The Circuit Court Administrator testified that about 5% of the forms were returned as undeliverable, and another 15 to 20% were not answered. App. 13a. From the pool of prospective jurors who completed questionnaires, the County granted requests for hardship exemptions, e.g., for lack of transportation or child care. Id., at 21a. Kent County then assigned nonexempt prospective jurors to their local district courts' venires. After filling the district courts' needs, the County assigned the remaining prospective jurors to the Circuit Court's panels. Id., at 20a, 22a.

The month after voir dire for Smith's trial, Kent County reversed the assignment order. It did so, according to the Circuit Court Administrator, based on “[t]he belief ... that the respective districts essentially swallowed up most of the minority jurors,” leaving the Circuit Court with a jury pool that “did not represent the entire county.” Id., at 22a. The Jury Minority Representation Committee, its co-chair testified, held the same view concerning the impact of choosing district court jurors first and not returning unused persons to the pool available for Circuit Court selections. Id., at 64a–65a.

The trial court considered two means of measuring the extent of underrepresentation of African–Americans on Circuit Court venires: “ absolute disparity” and “comparative disparity.” “Absolute disparity” is determined by subtracting the percentage of African–Americans in the jury pool (here, 6% in the six months leading up to Smith's trial) from the percentage of African–Americans in the local, jury-eligible population (here, 7.28%). By an absolute disparity measure, therefore, African–Americans were underrepresented by 1.28%. “Comparative disparity” is determined by dividing the absolute disparity (here, 1.28%) by the group's representation in the jury-eligible population (here, 7.28%). The quotient (here, 18%), showed that, in the six months prior to Smith's trial, African–Americans were, on average, 18% less likely, when compared to the overall jury-eligible population, to be on the jury-service list. App. to Pet. for Cert. 215a.

Isolating the month Smith's jury was selected, Smith's statistics expert estimated that the comparative disparity was 34.8%.App. 181a. In the 11 months after Kent County discontinued the district-court-first assignment policy, the comparative disparity, on average, dropped from 18% to 15.1%. Id., at 102a–103a, 113a.

Smith also introduced the testimony of an expert in demographics and economics, who tied the underrepresentation to social and economic factors. In Kent County, the expert explained, these...