Mitchell v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 18 January 1966
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 649-E.
• Citation: 250 F. Supp. 117
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Alabama
• Parties: William P. MITCHELL, David L. Beasley, Otis Pinkard, Wright L. Lassiter, Jr., Lucius A. Hayden and William C. Allen, Plaintiffs, United States of America, Plaintiff and Amicus Curiae, v. Edgar JOHNSON, E. P. Livingston, and H. P. Wilson, individually and as members of the Jury Commission of Macon County, Alabama, and Mrs. Grace P. Youngblood Hall, individually and as Clerk of the Jury Commission of Macon County, Alabama, Defendants.

250 F. Supp. 117

William P. MITCHELL, David L. Beasley, Otis Pinkard, Wright L. Lassiter, Jr., Lucius A. Hayden and William C. Allen, Plaintiffs, United States of America, Plaintiff and Amicus Curiae, v. Edgar JOHNSON, E. P. Livingston, and H. P. Wilson, individually and as members of the Jury Commission of Macon County, Alabama, and Mrs. Grace P. Youngblood Hall, individually and as Clerk of the Jury Commission of Macon County, Alabama, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 649-E.

United States District Court M. D. Alabama, E. D.

January 18, 1966.

John Doar, Asst. Atty. Gen., U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Ben Hardeman, U. S. Atty., Montgomery, Ala., for plaintiff and amicus curiae.

Gray & Seay, Montgomery, Ala., and Jack Greenberg and Michael Meltsner, New York City, for plaintiffs.

Richmond M. Flowers, Atty. Gen., Leslie Hall, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of Alabama, Montgomery, Ala., and Tom F. Young, Circuit Sol., Fifth Judicial Circuit of Alabama, Alexander City, Ala., for defendants.

JOHNSON, District Judge.

This action was tried to the Court without the intervention of a jury, on the issues made by the pleadings and proof. Upon consideration of the evidence, consisting of the oral testimony of several witnesses, the testimony by deposition of several witnesses, together with the exhibits, and the stipulations of the parties dictated into the record, this Court now proceeds to make and enter in this memorandum opinion, as authorized by Rule 52, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law.

The jurisdiction of this Court is invoked pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1443, and the action is authorized by 42 U.S.C. § 1983, with the plaintiffs, Negro citizens who are residents of Macon County, Alabama, bringing this action in their own behalf and on behalf of others similarly situated, pursuant to Rule 23(a) (3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The plaintiff-intervenor is the United States of America; its standing to intervene is established by 42 U.S.C. § 2000h-2 and by Rule 24(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The defendants are the members and the clerk of the jury commission of Macon County, Alabama. The plaintiffs, as Negro citizens of Macon County, Alabama, in their own behalf and on behalf of others similarly situated in Macon County, Alabama, seek a preliminary and permanent injunction enjoining and restraining the defendants from continuing to exclude, limit and restrict qualified Negroes from service on civil and criminal juries in Macon County, Alabama, on account of their race, and from utilizing any names presently contained in the jury box or on the jury rolls for the selection of jurors in any court in Macon County until such time as the names of Negroes qualified for jury duty therein shall have been placed in such jury boxes and on such jury rolls without exclusion, limitation or restriction on account of race.

Each county in Alabama has a jury commission composed of three members appointed by the Governor.¹ The commissioners must be qualified electors of the county and "reputed for their fairness, impartiality, integrity and good judgment."² The defendant members of the jury commission are required by the Alabama law to place on the jury roll "the names of all male citizens of the county who are generally reputed to be honest and intelligent men and are esteemed in the community for their integrity, good character and sound judgment * * *."³ The clerk of the jury commission is directed by law to "obtain the name of every male citizen of the county over twenty-one and under sixty-five years of age and their occupation, place of residence and place of business * * *."⁴ The jury commission is required to maintain a jury roll containing the name of "every male citizen living in the county who possessed the qualifications herein prescribed and who is not exempted by law from serving on juries."⁵ The names on the jury roll must also be printed on separate cards which are placed in a jury box.⁶ It is the duty of the commission to see that "the name of every person possessing the qualifications prescribed by the law of Alabama * * * to serve as a juror and not exempted by law from jury duty, is placed on the jury roll and in the jury box."⁷ The Alabama law says that to accomplish this the jury commission shall require the clerk to scan the registration lists, the lists returned to the tax assessor, any city directories, telephone directories, and any and every other source of information, and to visit every precinct at least once a year.⁸

The regular procedure for drawing the jury venire is for the judge to draw from the jury box in open court the names of either the grand or petit jurors (or both) to serve during the term needed. The clerk makes a list of the names drawn, and this venire containing these names is issued to the sheriff who summons the persons listed to appear and serve as jurors.⁹ In Alabama trial juries in both civil and criminal cases are selected by the "struck jury" method.¹⁰

The evidence in this case reflects that prior to June 3, 1964, the date that this lawsuit was filed, the jury commissioners of Macon County, Alabama, used a method of collecting names for the jury roll and jury box that relied primarily on their personal contacts in the community and, to some limited extent, on sources such as the voter registration list, the Tuskegee city directory and the telephone directory. The evidence is clear that the commissioners had not followed the procedure required by the Alabama state law.¹¹ The evidence further reflects that according to the seventeenth decennial census of the United States, taken in 1960, the white male population of Macon County 21 years of age and over was 1,365, and the Negro male population of the county 21 years of age and over was 6,234. There were 5,097 Negro males and 1,100 white males between the ages of 21 and 65. Despite this population ratio of "jury-service" qualified Negroes to "jury-service" qualified whites — insofar as sex and age is concerned — prior to the filing of this case the number of Negro jurors called on a civil or criminal jury venire or on a grand jury panel in Macon County, Alabama, was never more than one to seven percent of the total number called.

After this case was filed, the defendants on October 12, 1964, filed with this Court a copy of an order entered on August 5, 1964, by the Circuit Court of Macon County, Alabama. This order was executed by the three circuit court judges with jurisdiction over Macon County, Alabama, and the effect of the order was to order the members of the jury commission of Macon County, Alabama, "to promptly empty and refill the Jury Box of Macon County, Alabama, with and place on the Jury Roll of said County, the names of every person possessing the qualifications prescribed by Alabama law." After a copy of this Circuit Court order was filed with this Court, the defendants, through their attorneys, represented to this Court that the jury commissioners were in the process of carrying out this order of the Circuit Court and that the jury box would be completely refilled not later than January, 1965, in accordance with the law of the State of Alabama and the requirements of the Constitution of the United States. It was stipulated between the parties that this Court delay the hearing in this case in order to afford the jury commissioners of Macon County, Alabama, an opportunity to empty and refill the jury box in compliance with the order of the state court.

The evidence clearly reflected that even though there were more than four times as many Negro males as white in Macon County between the ages of 21 and 65, there were over 550 whites, but only about 250 Negroes on the jury roll at the time this lawsuit was filed. Sometime during the year 1964 (the evidence is not clear as to whether the action was taken before or after this case was filed), the names of 97 Negroes were added to the jury roll. The evidence further reflects that after the order of the circuit judges was entered on August 5, 1964, the jury commissioners and their clerk purged the old jury roll consisting of approximately 800 names, with the racial ratio as above-indicated, of persons who had left the county or who had reached the age of over 65. The remaining names were put on the new jury roll. Next, the jury commissioners added the names of approximately 156 Negroes from a list submitted to them by one prominent Negro citizen. Therefore, at the time of this hearing, and after the jury commissioners had emptied and refilled the jury box and had recompiled the jury roll in Macon County, the total number of names on the new roll was 1,138. Of this total number, 732 were white and 406 were Negro. Percentagewise, those whose names were placed on this jury roll represented approximately 55% of the eligible white population and approximately 9% of the eligible Negro population. In compiling this new roll, the defendants again did not follow the procedure outlined above, as required by the Alabama statutes. The clerk of the commission testified that she did not compile a list of all males from 21 to 65 as required by Title 30, § 18 of the Alabama Code, and, furthermore, that she did not make any effort to do so. Neither did the clerk go out in the county to attempt to gather names as required by the statute; the total number of names collected by the clerk for the assistance of the commissioners as contemplated by the appropriate Alabama statute, was not more than a dozen, none of which were Negroes' names.

The plaintiffs in this civil action assert the right of Negroes, collectively, to be free from racial discrimination in jury selection procedures. They invoke the constitutional principle that systematic exclusion for the purposeful discrimination against Negroes in selecting persons qualified for jury service involves arbitrary state action directly contrary to, and...