Lawrence v. State

• Decision Date: 07 May 1982
• Docket Number: No. 1583,1583
• Citation: 444 A.2d 478,51 Md.App. 575
• Parties: James Ivory LAWRENCE v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 575

51 Md.App. 575

444 A.2d 478

James Ivory LAWRENCE v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 1583.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

May 7, 1982.

George E. Burns, Jr., Asst. Public Defender, with whom was Alan H. Murrell, Public Defender, on the brief, for appellant.

Patricia E. McDonald, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Stephen H. Sachs, Atty. Gen., Sandra A. O'Connor, State's Atty. for Baltimore County and Robert Lazzaro, Asst. State's Atty. for Baltimore County, on the brief, for appellee.

Argued before MORTON, MOORE and MASON, JJ.

MASON, Judge.

In this case we are asked to decide whether the use of peremptory strikes to eliminate all blacks from the jury was a violation of the Federal and Maryland Constitutions.

James Ivory Lawrence, appellant, was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County of first degree murder and the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. He was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment for the murder conviction, and a concurrent term of fifteen years for the handgun conviction.

I.

During the impaneling of the jury the State peremptorily struck three black potential jurors. Thereafter, defense counsel made the following objection:

At this point I would point out the fact we have three black jurors, but they were all stricken by the State, and we would ask the Court to--indicate to the Court that under that situation obviously it prejudices the defendant, and the fact that I object to that.

THE COURT: Well I will overrule the objection for the record.

Appellant argues, in essence, that the prosecution's striking of three out of three black jurors leaving an all white jury, was a violation of the Federal and Maryland Constitutions.

Assuming that the three jurors were stricken solely because they were black rather than because of some specific bias related to the circumstances of the case, this precise issue was considered by the Supreme Court in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965). There, the prosecutor struck all six black-potential jurors from the venire. The black defendant was convicted of rape by an all white jury and was sentenced to death. In rejecting the defendant's claim that he was denied equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, the Supreme Court said at 380 U.S. 220-222, 85 S.Ct. at 835-37:

The essential nature of the peremptory challenge is that it is one exercised without a reason stated, without inquiry and without being subject to the court's control.

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It is no less frequently exercised on grounds normally thought irrelevant to legal proceedings or official action, namely, the race, religion, nationality, occupation or affiliations of people summoned for jury duty.

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Hence veniremen are not always judged solely as individuals for the purpose of exercising peremptory challenges. Rather they are challenged in light of the limited knowledge counsel has of them, which may include their group affiliations, in the context of the case to be tried.

With these considerations in mind, we cannot hold that the striking of Negroes in a particular case is a denial of equal protection of the laws. In the quest for an impartial and qualified jury, Negro and white, Protestant and Catholic, are alike subject to being challenged without cause. To subject the prosecutor's challenge in any particular case to the demands and traditional standards of the Equal Protection Clause would entail a radical change in the nature and operation of the challenge.

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In light of the purpose of the peremptory system and the function it serves in a pluralistic society in connection with the institution of jury trial, we cannot hold that the Constitution requires an examination of the prosecutor's reasons for the exercise of his challenges in any given case. The presumption in any particular case must be that the prosecutor is using the State's challenge to obtain a fair and impartial jury to try the case before the court. The presumption is not overcome and the prosecutor therefore subjected to examination by allegations that in the case at hand all Negroes were removed from the jury or that they were removed because they were Negroes. Any other result, we think, would establish a rule wholly at odds with the peremptory challenge system as we know it. Hence the motion to strike the trial jury was properly denied in this case.

Accord Johnson v. State, 9 Md.App. 143, 262 A.2d 792 (1970); see also Pearson v. State, 15 Md.App. 462, 291 A.2d 167 (1972); Brice v. State, 264 Md. 352, 286 A.2d 132 (1972); King v. State Roads Commission, 284 Md. 368, 396 A.2d 267 (1979). We think it evident that Swain is dispositive of appellant's assertion that the prosecutor's use of peremptory strikes to eliminate blacks from the jury was a violation of the Federal Constitution.

In ostensible reliance on the cases of Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 387 N.E.2d 499 (1979) and People v. Wheeler, 22 Cal.3d 258, 148 Cal.Rptr. 890, 583 P.2d 748 (1978) appellant also contends that the use of peremptory strikes to exclude blacks from the jury is a violation of the Maryland Constitution. In Wheeler the defendants were black and the victim was white. The prosecutor struck all black jurors by means of peremptory challenges. Upon conviction the defendants appealed and argued that they were denied their right to trial by an impartial jury under the California Constitution. In Swain the issue of using peremptory strikes to eliminate blacks from the jury was adjudicated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment rather than the impartial jury rule under the Sixth Amendment enunciated in Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975). In Wheeler the Court assumed that if the issue was presented to the Supreme Court "it would reaffirm Swain and reach the same result under the representative cross-section rule as it did under the Equal Protection Clause." Id. 148 Cal.Rptr. at 898, 583 P.2d at 757. For this reason the court determined the issue under California law which provided more protection than Swain.

Article I, section 16 of the California Constitution provides, in relevant part: "Trial by jury is an inviolate right and shall be secured to all...." The Court noted that this provision "does not explicitly guarantee trial by an impartial jury, as does the Sixth Amendment to the Federal Constitution; but that right is no less implicitly guaranteed by our charter, as the courts have long recognized." After reviewing a series of Supreme Court decisions which hold, in effect, that an essential prerequisite to an impartial jury is that it be drawn from a representative cross-section of the community, the Court concluded:

When a party presumes that certain jurors are biased merely because they are members of an identifiable group distinguished on race, religion, ethnic or similar grounds we may call this group 'group bias'--a peremptorily strike on such persons for that reason alone, it not only upsets the demographic balance of the venire, it frustrates the primary purpose of the representative cross-section requirement. Id. 148 Cal.Rptr. at 902, 583 P.2d at 761.

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We conclude that the use of peremptory challenges to remove prospective jurors on the sole ground of group bias violates the right to a trial by a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community under Article I, section 16 of the California Constitution.

This does not mean that the members of such a group are immune from peremptory challenges: individual members thereof may still be struck on grounds of specific bias as defined herein. Nor does it mean that a party will be entitled to a petit jury that proportionately represents every group in the community: we adhere to the long-settled rule that no litigant has the right to a jury that mirrors the demographic composition of the population, or necessarily includes members of his own group, or indeed is composed of any particular individuals.

What it does mean, however, is that a party is constitutionally entitled to a petit jury that is as near an approximation of the ideal cross-section of the community as the process of random draw permits. (Citations omitted).

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... [W]e cannot countenance the decimation of the surviving jurors by peremptory challenges on the ground of group bias alone. Id. 148 Cal.Rptr. at 903, 583 P.2d at 762.

Likewise, in Commonwealth v. Soares, supra, the defendants were black; the victim of the murder was white, and twelve out of thirteen black potential jurors were peremptorily challenged by the prosecutor. On appeal the defendants claimed that they were denied their right to be tried by an impartial jury. The court followed the Wheeler decision and based its holding on the Massachusetts Constitution rather than Swain.

Article 12 of the Declaration of Rights of the Massachusetts Constitution provides, in pertinent part: "And no subject shall be arrested, imprisoned, despoiled, or deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, exiled, or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by judgment of his peers, or the law of the land." In delineating the characteristics of the jury contemplated by Article 12, the court in prior cases had stated, among other things, that a "defendant is constitutionally entitled to a jury selection process free of discrimination against his grouping in the community...." Id. 387 N.E.2d at 510. Based on this premise, the Court, in holding that the defendants were denied the right to be tried by an impartial jury in violation of Article 12, stated:

[E]xercise of peremptory challenges to exclude members of discrete groups, solely on the basis of bias presumed to derive from the individual's membership in the group, contravenes the requirement inherent in Article 12 of...