Hardin v. City of Gadsden, Civ. A. No. 89-C-2164-M.
| Decision Date | 12 November 1993 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 89-C-2164-M. |
| Citation | 837 F. Supp. 1113 |
| Parties | Josephine HARDIN, as Executrix of the Estate of Edie Houseal, Deceased, Plaintiff, v. The CITY OF GADSDEN, Defendant. R.L. Webb, Julius Walker, and The City of Birmingham, Alabama, Plaintiffs-Intervenors, United States of America, amicus curiae. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama |
Robert M. Shipman, Earl D. McNeal, Huntsville, AL, for plaintiff.
Don G. DeCoudres, Birmingham, AL, Donald R. Rhea, Rhea Boyd & Rhea, Jack Floyd, Floyd Keener Cusimano & Roberts, Gadsden, AL, Julius F. Parker, Jr., Jennifer Parker LaVia, Parker Skelding Labasky & Corry, Tallahassee, FL, Roger W. Kirby, City of Gadsden, Legal Dept., Gadsden, AL, for defendants.
Joe R. Whatley, Jr., Samuel H. Heldman, Cooper Mitch Crawford Kuykendall & Whatley, Donald V. Watkins, Demetrius C. Newton, Birmingham City Attorney's Office, Birmingham, AL, for plaintiffs-intervenors City of Birmingham and R.L. Webb.
Kenneth Lamar Thomas, Thomas Means & Gillis, Montgomery, AL, for plaintiff-intervenor Julius Walker.
Caryl P. Privett, Claude Harris, U.S. Attorney's Office, Birmingham, AL, for amicus curiae U.S.
Civil litigants in the federal courts have a right to petit juries selected at random from a fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes. 28 U.S.C. § 1861 (Supp.1993). Moreover, no citizen may be excluded from service as a petit juror because of race or economic status. 28 U.S.C. § 1862 (Supp. 1993). According to the evidence, the Northern District of Alabama is the country's only statutorily-divided judicial district whose jury plan provides for the use of district-wide jury wheels in civil cases.
A substantial majority (64%) of the district's eligible black voters live in two of the district's seven divisions. The district covers half of the state. Aside from interstate carriers, there is no inter-division public transportation. A one-way distance from a community in one division to the courthouse in another may be as great as 223 miles. Black households in the district are disproportionately poor and lack motor vehicles. The Jury Plan of the Northern District of Alabama (the "Plan") does not provide for the advancement of expenses to summoned jurors whose service will require long-distance travel and overnight lodging. On many of the civil petit juries in the Northern District, there are no blacks and on others, there is only one black.
In this factual milieu, plaintiff and the intervenors raise three pregnant questions on their motion to quash the venire. (1) Does the Northern District's use of a district-wide jury plan deny black litigants their right to a jury selected from a "fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes?" (2) Does the use of the district-wide plan disproportionately exclude blacks from the opportunity to be considered for jury service because of their race and economic status? (3) Finally, does the exclusive use of voter lists satisfy the "fair cross-section" requirement?
Plaintiff and intervenors' challenges of the Northern District's master jury wheel ("MJW") and qualified jury wheel ("QJW") are based on the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1861-1878 (Supp. 1993), ("the Act") and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Plaintiff Josephine Hardin is the administratrix of the estate of Edie Houseal, a deceased black woman. In the main action, plaintiff contends that the City of Gadsden, Alabama was deliberately indifferent to the known medical needs of the decedent, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Intervenor City of Birmingham is the largest city in the State of Alabama. It has a majority black citizenry. Intervenors R.L. Webb and Julius Walker are individual black citizens who reside in the Southern Division. All of the intervenors are litigants in ongoing jury-demanded litigation in the Northern District. Plaintiff and the intervenors have standing to challenge the Plan because they are litigants and they raise claims of racial discrimination. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1861, 1862 (Supp.1993).
The United States has appeared as amicus curiae. It takes the position that the use of a district wide plan does not violate the Act, and that the voter lists alone properly represent a fair cross section of the community.
Based on the accompanying Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, the Court concludes that the plaintiff and intervenors have carried their burden of proof that the Northern District's continued use of district-wide jury wheels violates the Act.1
The Plan provides that "the official voter registration lists maintained by the counties comprising the district represent a fair cross-section of the community...." Intervenor Exhibit ("IX") 1 (emphasis added). In the view of the Plan, the district itself is "the community." Notably, the Act requires something more than juries selected at random from the district. It requires that jurors represent a fair cross section of the community "wherein the court convenes" in the district or division.2
The factual findings make it abundantly clear that the demographics of the various divisions in the Northern District differ substantially. Early on, prior to the existence of the Act and its "fair cross section of the community" requirement, our predecessor circuit noted that "the compositions of the different Divisions within the Northern District varied greatly in population, in the urban or rural character of the component counties, and in the racial characterizations of the counties...." Jackson v. Morrow, 404 F.2d 903, 905 (5th Cir.1968).
The Eleventh Circuit has recognized the vast differences between communities in the divisions of the Northern District. In discussing the propriety of requiring a Huntsville resident to be tried in Birmingham, the Circuit observed that "one must not arbitrarily be sent, without his consent, into a strange locality to defend himself against the powerful prosecutorial resources of the Government. We must remember in applying Rule 18 that Huntsville is almost 100 miles from Birmingham" United States v. Burns, 662 F.2d 1378, 1382 (11th Cir.1981) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added). Elsewhere in the opinion, the Circuit described the Southern Division as "an environment alien to the Huntsville defendant." Id. at 1383.
The word "community," in its plain and ordinary meaning, denotes a unified body of individuals with common interests living in a particular area. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 267 (1987). Legally, it has the same meaning: "neighborhood; vicinity, synonymous with locality." Black's Law Dictionary, 254 (5th ed. 1979). It is "a society or body of people living in the same place, under the same laws and regulations, who have common rights, privileges, or interests." Id.
The First Judiciary Act and the predecessor statutes all provided that "grand and petit jurors shall from time to time be selected from such parts of the district as the court directs...." Erwin Surrency, History of the Federal Courts, 172 (1987) (emphasis added). In 1911, Congress authorized district courts to maintain "separate jury boxes for some or all of the places for holding court in the district." 28 U.S.C. § 1865 (1966).3 These references place in historical perspective the intent of Congress when it utilized the phrase "fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes." 28 U.S.C. § 1861 (1993).
At least in this Circuit, every district court has concluded that the divisional, rather than district-wide, QJWs best satisfy the "cross section of the community" and the "opportunity to serve on petit juries" objectives of the Act.
Given the extent of poverty and lack of vehicles among blacks in the Northern District generally, the use of a district-wide jury wheel disproportionately denies them the opportunity to serve on juries outside their divisions. When poverty-stricken blacks residing in the Southern Division are summoned to serve in Birmingham, it is reasonable for the Clerk to expect those jurors to take a public bus to and from the federal courthouse daily during the term of Court. However, if those same jurors are summoned to serve in Florence — some 120-140 miles away — that option is simply unavailable. When a black voter in Pickens County (where one-third (31.5%) of the blacks lack transportation and over half (54.2%) are in poverty) is summoned to serve in the Western Division, she may be able to "bum a ride" to Tuscaloosa; but if that same prospective juror is summoned to serve in the Southern Division, it is unlikely that she will appear for trial in Birmingham. Most likely, the juror would seek and probably receive an excuse from service, or will simply fail to report. Under either scenario, the effect is the same on both black litigants and on blacks who are entitled to jury service consideration.
The statutory policies that "all citizens shall have the opportunity to be considered for service," and that "no citizen shall be excluded from jury service on account of race ... or economic status"4 are frustrated by the use of district-wide MJWs and QJWs in the Northern District of Alabama. The geographical vastness of the district, the widespread poverty of its black citizenry, and the attendant lack of the vehicles which are essential to service in other divisions render the opportunity of blacks to actually serve on its juries more theoretical than real. Thus, by their economic status, blacks are systematically excluded from jury service.5
The plaintiffs and intervenors also challenge the exclusive use of voter lists as the source of the MJWs and QJWs. Under established law of this Circuit, unless there is a ten-percent absolute disparity between eligible blacks in the...
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