Prince v. Parke

• Decision Date: 18 October 1995
• Docket Number: No. 3:95cv0499 AS.,3:95cv0499 AS.
• Citation: 907 F. Supp. 1243
• Parties: Kevin PRINCE, Petitioner, v. Al C. PARKE, Superintendent, Indiana State Prison, and Indiana Attorney General, Pamela Carter, Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

907 F. Supp. 1243

Kevin PRINCE, Petitioner, v. Al C. PARKE, Superintendent, Indiana State Prison, and Indiana Attorney General, Pamela Carter, Respondents.

No. 3:95cv0499 AS.

United States District Court, N.D. Indiana, South Bend Division.

October 18, 1995.

Kevin Prince, Michigan City, IN, Pro Se.

Randall Koester, Office of Indiana Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, for Respondents.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ALLEN SHARP, Chief Judge.

On June 15, 1995, pro se petitioner Kevin Prince, an inmate at the Indiana State Prison, Michigan City, Indiana, filed a petition seeking relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The response filed by the respondents on August 15, 1995, demonstrates the necessary compliance with Lewis v. Faulkner, 689 F.2d 100 (7th Cir.1982). The petitioner filed a Traverse and Memorandum on August 28, 1995, which this court has carefully examined. The state court record has been filed and examined pursuant to the mandates of Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963).

The petitioner was convicted of the crime of murder in a jury trial in the St. Joseph Superior Court in South Bend, Indiana. Judge William T. Means sentenced the petitioner to a prison term of 40 years in 1992. A direct appeal was taken to the Third District of the Court of Appeals of Indiana. That court, speaking through Judge Garrard in an unpublished memorandum decision, affirmed the aforesaid conviction in an elaborate, nine-page opinion in which Judges Hoffman and Shields concurred. For the immediate reference of all concerned, the court's memorandum decision of June 24, 1994, is marked as Appendix "A", attached hereto and incorporated herein. The Supreme Court of Indiana denied transfer. A facial examination of Judge Garrard's excellent opinion will clearly indicate the factual setting of this case and satisfy the factual predicate demanded by Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).

Certainly, the facts found by the Court of Appeals of Indiana can and should be presumed to be correct under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b). Justice Stewart, speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States in Jackson, stated:

A judgment by a state appellate court rejecting a challenge to evidentiary sufficiency is of course entitled to deference by the federal courts, as is any judgment affirming a criminal conviction. But Congress in § 2254 has selected the federal district courts as precisely the forums that are responsible for determining whether state convictions have been secured in accord with federal constitutional law. The federal habeas corpus statute presumes the norm of a fair trial in the state court and adequate state postconviction remedies to redress possible error. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b), (d). What it does not presume is that these state proceedings will always be without error in the constitutional sense. The duty of a federal habeas corpus court to appraise a claim that constitutional error did occur—reflecting as it does the belief that the "finality" of a deprivation of liberty through the invocation of the criminal sanction is simply not to be achieved at the expense of a constitutional right—is not one that can be so lightly abjured.

Jackson, 443 U.S. at 323, 99 S.Ct. at 2791. The Supreme Court in Jackson stated:

We hold that in a challenge to a state criminal conviction brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2254—if the settled procedural prerequisites for such a claim have otherwise been satisfied—the applicant is entitled to habeas corpus relief if it is found that upon the record evidence adduced at trial no rational trier of fact could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Id. at 324, 99 S.Ct. at 2791-92 (footnote omitted). See also Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 101 S.Ct. 764, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981); Dooley v. Duckworth, 832 F.2d 445 (7th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 967, 108 S.Ct. 1239, 99 L.Ed.2d 438 (1988); United States ex rel. Haywood v. O'Leary, 827 F.2d 52 (7th Cir.1987); Bryan v. Warden, Indiana State Reformatory, 820 F.2d 217 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 867, 108 S.Ct. 190, 98 L.Ed.2d 142 (1987); Shepard v. Lane, 818 F.2d 615 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 929, 108 S.Ct. 296, 98 L.Ed.2d 256 (1987); Perri v. Director, Dep't of Corrections, 817 F.2d 448 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 843, 108 S.Ct. 135, 98 L.Ed.2d 92 (1987). Following Jackson, supra, there is an increasingly long line of cases in this circuit which suggest that the facts found by the highest court of a state are presumed correct. See Andersen v. Thieret, 903 F.2d 526, 531 (7th Cir.1990). A review of the record in the light most favorable to the prosecution convinces the court that a rational trier of fact could readily have found the petitioner guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of murder.

DISCUSSION

The petitioner, an African-American, challenges the racial imbalance of the jury venire and that the same violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights under the Constitution of the United States. The fifty-member jury venire which was available for jury selection in this petitioner's trial in the Superior Court of St. Joseph County had a single African-American person. In attempting to extrapolate this into a constitutional violation as in such cases as Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975), Holland v. Illinois, 493 U.S. 474, 110 S.Ct. 803, 107 L.Ed.2d 905 (1990), and Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979), the petitioner argues that the St. Joseph County system of calling jurors solely from the voter registration lists systematically underrepresents African-Americans and, thus, deprived him of his right to be tried by a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.¹ This court disagrees.

A. Fair Cross-Section

Under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, a defendant accused of a serious crime has the right to be tried "by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." U.S. CONST. amend. VI. The Supreme Court has interpreted this provision to mean that the venire from which a criminal defendant's jury is chosen must be selected from a representative cross-section of the community. Taylor, 419 U.S. at 528, 95 S.Ct. at 696-97; Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 149, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 1447, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968); United States v. Guy, 924 F.2d 702, 706 (7th Cir.1991). The Sixth Amendment requirement of a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community is made binding upon the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Duncan, 391 U.S. at 159, 88 S.Ct. at 1452-53. In order to establish a prima facie violation of the Sixth Amendment's fair cross-section requirement, the defendant 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.

Duren, 439 U.S. at 364, 99 S.Ct. at 668; see also Bradley v. State, 649 N.E.2d 100, 104 (Ind.1995). Unlike in the context of an equal protection claim, where the defendant must prove purposeful discrimination, Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977), "systematic disproportion itself demonstrates an infringement of the defendant's interest in ... a fair community cross section." Duren, 439 U.S. at 368 n. 26, 99 S.Ct. at 670 n. 26. Once the defendant has made a prima facie showing that his constitutional right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community has been infringed, the burden shifts to the State to demonstrate that a significant state interest is "manifestly and primarily" advanced by those aspects of the selection process which result in a disproportionate exclusion of the distinctive group. Duren, 439 U.S. at 367-68, 99 S.Ct. at 670; Bradley, 649 N.E.2d at 104. The State may not advance merely rational grounds for the underrepresentation of the distinctive group. Duren, 439 U.S. at 367.

As noted above, the petitioner contends that African-Americans are systematically excluded by St. Joseph County's jury selection system. Clearly, African-Americans constitute a distinctive group for purposes of the first part of the Duren test, United States v. Ashley, 54 F.3d 311, 313 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 116 S.Ct. 232, 133 L.Ed.2d 161 (1995); see Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. 162, 175, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 1765-66, 90 L.Ed.2d 137 (1986), and the State does not here dispute that fact. Rather, the State contends that the petitioner has failed to establish the second and third elements of the Duren test. The court notes that at one point in his argument, the petitioner attempts to expand the definition of the distinctive group claimed to be excluded to encompass "minorities" in general. Petitioner's Memorandum at 2. The petitioner presents no authority for his argument that "minorities" should be recognized as a separate ethnic group for purposes of the fair cross-section requirement. This court does not understand the requirement of a distinctive group under Duren to allow various groups to be `lumped' together into one distinctive group called "minorities." Any group of persons which might casually be referred to as "minorities" would have no internal cohesion, nor would it be viewed as an identifiable group by the population at large. In Taylor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court concluded that females constitute a distinctive group because "`a community made up exclusively of one sex is different from a community composed of both.'" 419 U.S. at 531, 95 S.Ct. at 698 (alteration added) (quoting Ballard v. United States, 329 U.S. 187, 193, 67 S.Ct. 261, 264, 91 L.Ed. 181 (1946)). Following the logic of Taylor, if one assumes that a...