Eckstein v. Kirby

• Decision Date: 09 June 1978
• Docket Number: No. LR-C-78-91.,LR-C-78-91.
• Citation: 452 F. Supp. 1235
• Parties: Teresa ECKSTEIN, Plaintiff, v. William J. KIRBY, Judge, First Division, Circuit Court of Pulaski County, and the State of Arkansas, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas

452 F. Supp. 1235

Teresa ECKSTEIN, Plaintiff, v. William J. KIRBY, Judge, First Division, Circuit Court of Pulaski County, and the State of Arkansas, Defendants.

No. LR-C-78-91.

United States District Court, E. D. Arkansas, W. D.

June 9, 1978.

Robert Fussell, Little Rock, Ark., for plaintiff.

John Wesley Hall, Jr., Deputy Pros. Atty., Little Rock, Ark., for Kirby.

Jackson Jones, Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, Ark., for the State.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ROY, District Judge.

This declaratory judgment action questions the constitutionality of Ark.Stat.Ann. § 39-102(c) and (f) (Supp.1977). The challenged statutory provisions provide in pertinent part as follows: "The following are disqualified to act as grand or petit jurors: (c) Persons who are unable to speak or understand the English language. (f) Persons whose senses of hearing or seeing are substantially impaired."

The jurisdiction of the district court is premised upon the provisions of 28 U.S.C. §§ 1343(3) and (4), 2201-02; and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The facts and circumstances preceding the institution of this suit have been, for the most part, stipulated by the parties.

The plaintiff, Ms. Teresa Eckstein, is totally deaf and mute having been so incapacitated since birth. Ms. Eckstein is a citizen of the United States of America and the State of Arkansas. She is a graduate of the Arkansas School For The Deaf and resides, is registered to vote, and pays taxes in Pulaski County, Arkansas. She is gainfully employed in the tele-processing department of a local business concern. She can read, write and understand the English language. She is articulate in performing manual sign language and, through the assistance of a qualified interpreter, can receive and transmit the English language to hearing persons at an above normal level.

The defendants in this case are the State of Arkansas and William J. Kirby who is a trial judge in Arkansas' Sixth Judicial District. Judge Kirby, at all times relevant to the present action, presided over the First Division of the Pulaski County Circuit Court, the jurisdiction of which includes the trial of cases involving felony offenses under Arkansas law.

On March 20, 1978 the plaintiff, Ms. Teresa Eckstein, was selected as a prospective petit juror in the First Division of the Pulaski County Circuit Court in the trial of a felony case. The plaintiff appeared for jury duty as instructed by the court and was accompanied by Mr. Clarence F. Landon, a qualified court interpreter and a certified member of the National Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. According to the stipulations between the parties, Mr. Landon has served as an interpreter in state court trials for deaf persons or persons with substantial hearing impairment who have either been called as witnesses or who have appeared as parties to various actions. Mr. Landon is a hearing person and communicates with deaf persons by transmitting and receiving manual English sign language. During the course of the voir dire examination of the prospective jurors, Judge Kirby made, in substance, the following inquiry in an effort to determine the plaintiff's qualifications to serve as a petit juror:

Q. (By Judge Kirby through an interpreter) Do you know the defendant?

A. (Through an interpreter) No.

Q. Do you know any of the witnesses who will be called to testify in the case?

A. No.

Q. Do you know anything about this case?

A. No.

Q. Could you render a fair verdict in the case?

A. Yes.

Q. (By the Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, through an interpreter) Will you need an interpreter during the course of the deliberations of the jury?

A. Yes.

The plaintiff was thereafter excused for cause by defendant Kirby.

On March 27, 1978 Ms. Eckstein filed an action for declaratory judgment in federal court. On March 31, 1978 the plaintiff voluntarily reappeared for jury service in the First Division of the Pulaski County Circuit Court. Defendant Kirby permanently discharged the plaintiff from the jury panel at that time, having found the plaintiff disqualified for service by virtue of Ark.Stat. Ann. § 39-102(f) (Supp.1977).

The plaintiff contends that section 39-102(c) & (f), supra, on its face and as applied to her, violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The plaintiff argues that the state law arbitrarily and capriciously excludes persons with substantial hearing impairment without appropriate guidelines or standards for determining whether such persons possess other attributes necessary for serving effectively as a juror. The plaintiff further argues that the statutory provisions discriminate against non-hearing persons in that the legislative classification created by the statute denies a right or privilege of citizenship, i. e., the right to be considered for service as a juror, to deaf persons or persons with substantial hearing impairment, while granting the same right or privilege to hearing persons. The plaintiff, in effect, argues that jury service is a right or privilege incidental to citizenship and that the state law in question, by disqualifying her merely on the basis of a physical incapacity such as deafness, invidiously excludes her from exercising or participating in the enjoyment of this right.

The individual defendant and the State of Arkansas contend that there is no "right" to serve on a jury. Alternatively, the defendants argue that the legislative exclusion of persons with substantial hearing impairment from jury service is a reasonable and legitimate exercise of the State's right to determine juror qualifications. The defendants contend that there is ample and sufficient justification for disqualifying deaf persons or persons with substantial hearing impairment from jury service. Those justifications include the following contentions: (1) Deaf persons have limited vocabularies, thus even with the assistance of interpreters verbatim translations of questions and answers cannot be achieved; (2) interpreters cannot adequately convey a witness' voice inflection or the more subtle nuances of verbal communication, thereby precluding a deaf person or a person with a substantial hearing impairment from considering factors as important as the communication itself in assessing the credibility of a witness; (3) a deaf juror cannot observe the demeanor of a witness and at the same time pay the necessary attention to the communications or manual sign language of the interpreter; and (4) the presence of an interpreter during jury deliberations would violate the secrecy traditionally associated with the jury room and would constitute reversible error in the trial of a criminal case. Lastly, the defendants argue that the statutory disqualification is rationally related to a legitimate, if not a compelling, state interest, i. e., providing a person accused of a criminal offense with a trial before a panel of jurors who are competent to adequately receive and evaluate all the evidence presented at the trial.

The principal issue in this case, as previously indicated, is whether section 39-102(f), supra, violates the mandates of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Careful consideration has been given to the arguments made by the respective parties on this issue not only because of the importance of the case to the parties, but because of the very nature of the case itself. While constitutional challenges to state jury selection laws have not been uncommon, the facts in this particular case present constitutional questions of first impression.

This case deals with the fundamental right of the State to prescribe qualifications for its prospective petit jurors, but even more importantly, it deals with constitutionally imposed limitations on that authority. Any meaningful analysis of the limitations imposed upon the State of Arkansas' authority in this area must, of necessity, include a review of the State's authority in the first instance.

In Rawlins v. Georgia, 201 U.S. 638, 26 S.Ct. 560, 50 L.Ed. 899 (1906), the appellant, a convicted murderer sentenced to life imprisonment, challenged the constitutionality of a Georgia statute which exempted persons in certain occupational classes (lawyers, doctors, ministers, preachers, engineers, dentists and firemen) from serving as jurors. The appellant contended that the exclusion of persons in these occupational classes deprived him of a fair trial under the Fourteenth Amendment since these classes of persons could provide a perspective to a jury panel that would not otherwise be present. The appellant's argument, in essence, was an early assertion of a denial of the right to be tried before a jury composed of a fair cross section of the community. Justice Holmes, rejecting the appellant's Fourteenth Amendment Due Process argument, held that there was nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment which prevented a State from excluding and exempting from jury duty certain classes on the bona fide ground that the welfare of the community required that their regular work continue uninterrupted.

During the decades following the Rawlins decision the Court, on several occasions, again addressed Fourteenth Amendment problems as they arose through the application of state jury selection laws. Virtually all of the Supreme Court's decisions in this area dealt with the exclusion of racially identifiable segments of the population through the operation of state jury selection laws. Arnold v. North Carolina, 376 U.S. 773, 84 S.Ct. 1032, 12 L.Ed.2d 77 (1964) per curiam; Eubanks v. Louisiana, 356 U.S. 584, 78 S.Ct. 970, 2 L.Ed.2d 991 (1958); Reece v. Georgia, 350 U.S. 85, 76 S.Ct. 167, 100 L.Ed. 77 (1955); Cassell v. Texas, 339 U.S. 282, 70 S.Ct. 629, 94 L.Ed. 839 (1950); Hill v. Texas, 316 U.S. 400, 62 S.Ct. 1159, 86 L.Ed. 1559 (1942); Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940); Pierre v....