State Carolina v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 06 September 2011
• Docket Number: No. COA10–1566.,COA10–1566.
• Citation: State Carolina v. Jackson, 716 S.E.2d 61 (N.C. App. 2011)
• Parties: STATE of North Carolinav.Antonio Lee JACKSON and Rodrico Lewis Jackson.
• Court: North Carolina Court of Appeals

716 S.E.2d 61

STATE of North Carolina

v.Antonio Lee JACKSON and Rodrico Lewis Jackson.

No. COA10–1566.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

Sept. 6, 2011.

Appeal by Defendants from judgments entered 19 August 2010 by Judge Carl R. Fox in Orange County Superior Court.Heard in the Court of Appeals 28 April 2011.

Roy Cooper, Attorney General, by Angel E. Gray, Assistant Attorney General, and June S. Ferrell, Assistant Attorney General, for the State.

James W. Carter, Smithfield, for DefendantAntonio Lee Jackson, and Thomas R. Sallenger, Wilson, for DefendantRodrico Lewis Jackson.

THIGPEN, Judge.

Rodrico Lewis Jackson(“Rodrico”) and Antonio Lee Jackson(“Antonio”)¹(together, “Defendants”) were convicted of robbery with a dangerous weapon.On appeal, they contend that the trial court erred by denying their motion to discharge the jury venire because their race was disproportionately underrepresented and by denying their motions to dismiss for insufficiency of the evidence.We find their arguments without merit, and conclude Defendants had a fair trial, free from error.

The evidence of record tends to show that on 1 May 2009, Antonio met Justin Dent while Dent was walking his dog in Hillsborough, North Carolina.Antonio asked Dent about his new iPhone and Dent allowed him to look at it; Antonio then handed it back to him.Several friends were visiting Dent's Ashford Lake apartment that day, and Dent invited Antonio to visit.Antonio and another person visited Dent's apartment later that day.

Katina Jeffries, Antonio's girlfriend, drove a burgundy Chrysler and frequently gave Defendants rides in her car.Although Jeffries did not remember the exact date, she recalled giving Defendants a ride one day from Efland to Ashford Lakes apartments in Hillsborough around midday.

At midday on 5 May 2009, Dent said Defendants visited his Ashford Lakes apartment.Dent's dog began barking, and Dent stepped out of the front door to talk to Defendants.He closed the door behind him to keep the dog in the apartment.Dent recognized Antonio from their meeting a few days earlier, but he had not seen Rodrico before.Dent noticed a burgundy sedan in the parking lot with people in it.

Antonio told Dent he planned to meet someone in the area and asked if he could use Dent's iPhone to call and ask about his ride.Dent let Antonio use his iPhone, after entering the code to unlock it, and Antonio began talking and walking away with Dent's iPhone.Dent noticed the iPhone still showed the home screen, which meant that Antonio had not actually made a call.Dent became suspicious and began following Antonio.Rodrico stepped in front of Dent, pulled out a gun, pointed it at his face, and stated, “Get the [expletive deleted] back[.]”Dent described the gun as a “small revolver, possibly a .22 [.]”At that point, Antonio started running away, and Rodrico slowly started to walk backwards, turned around, and began running.

On 19 August 2010, a jury found both Defendants guilty of robbery with a dangerous weapon, and the court entered judgments consistent with the jury's verdicts, sentencing Antonio, a prior record level II offender, in the presumptive range to 65 to 87 months incarceration, and sentencing Rodrico, a prior record level III offender, in the presumptive range to 92 to 120 months incarceration.From these judgments, Defendants appealed.

I: Disproportionate Jury Representation

In Defendants' first argument on appeal, they contend the trial court erred in denying their motion to discharge the jury venire.Specifically, Defendants argue the trial court erred because their race was disproportionately underrepresented in the composition of the jury venire in violation of their State and federal constitutional rights.We disagree.

“Our state and federal Constitutions protect a criminal defendant's right to be tried by a jury of his peers.”State v. Williams,355 N.C. 501, 548, 565 S.E.2d 609, 637(2002), cert. denied,537 U.S. 1125, 123 S.Ct. 894, 154 L.Ed.2d 808(2003)(quotation omitted).“This constitutional guarantee assures that members of a defendant's own race have not been systematically and arbitrarily excluded from the jury pool which is to decide [his] guilt or innocence.”Id.(quotation omitted).“However, the Sixth Amendment does not guarantee a defendant the right to a jury composed of members of a certain race or gender.”Id.,355 N.C. at 549, 565 S.E.2d at 637(quotation omitted).

The burden is upon the defendant to show a prima facie case of racial systematic exclusion.State v. Brower,289 N.C. 644, 652–54, 224 S.E.2d 551, 558–59(1976), motion for reconsideration denied,293 N.C. 259, 243 S.E.2d 143(1978).In order for a defendant to establish a prima facie violation for disproportionate representation in a venire, he must show the following:

(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.

Williams,355 N.C. at 549, 565 S.E.2d at 637(quotingDuren v. Missouri,439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 668, 58 L.Ed.2d 579, 587(1979)).

At trial, Defendants argued that because there were sixty people in the venire and only three African–Americans, the venire was not representative of Orange County.Defendants stated they did not have any demographic data to present to the court with regard to the racial composition of Orange County.However, without any data to corroborate their assertion, Defendants said the African–American population in Orange County was “certainly greater than ... five percent.”Defendants made a motion to strike the jury panel and moved for a mistrial, stating their constitutional rights were violated.The trial court denied Defendants' motion.

On appeal, Defendants' argue that the trial court erred by denying their motion because only three out of sixty people in the venire were African–American.We believe this alone is insufficient to support the second and third prongs set forth in Williams to establish a prima facie violation for disproportionate representation in a venire.

With respect to the first prong of the prima facie test, Defendants have met their burden.African–Americans are considered a constitutionally cognizable group for Sixth Amendment fair cross-section purposes.SeeState v. Golphin,352 N.C. 364, 393, 533 S.E.2d 168, 191(2000), cert. denied,532 U.S. 931, 121 S.Ct. 1379, 149 L.Ed.2d 305(2001)(“There is no question ... that defendants satisfied the first prong ... because African–Americans are unquestionably a ‘distinct’ group for purposes of [this] analysis”).

However, with respect to the second prong, Defendants failed to produce any evidence at trial that the representation of African–Americans in the venire from which the jury was selected “[was] not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community.”Williams,355 N.C. at 549, 565 S.E.2d at 637.Defendants stated that the African–American population in Orange County was “certainly greater than ... five percent.”However, Defendants produced no evidence ... to support their assertion.²The opinion of the defense attorneys as to what they believed to be the percentage of African–Americans in Orange County is insufficient to show that the representation of African–Americans in the venire from which the jury was selected was not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of African–Americans in the community.Compare, Duren,439 U.S. at 364–66, 99 S.Ct. at 668–69, 58 L.Ed.2d at 587–88(1979)(stating“the defendant must demonstrate the percentage of the community made up of the group alleged to be underrepresented” and concluding, “[g]iven petitioner's proof [from census figures] that in the relevant community slightly over half of the adults are women, we must disagree with the conclusion of the court below that jury venires containing approximately 15% women are ‘reasonably representative’ of this community”).³

With respect to the third prong, Defendants have presented no evidence showing that the alleged deficiency of African–Americans in the venire was because of the systematic exclusion of this group in the jury selection process.Both Defendants contend on appeal that the fact that only three out of sixty potential jurors in the venire were African–American is sufficient to show systematic exclusion of the group.This contention falls short of satisfying the requirement of the third prong established in Duren.“The fact that a particular jury or a series of juries does not statistically reflect the racial composition of the community does not in itself make out an invidious discrimination forbidden by the [Equal Protection] Clause.”Bowman,349 N.C. at 469, 509 S.E.2d at 435(quotation omitted).We conclude the fact, without more, that only three of sixty people in the jury venire were African–American is insufficient to show that the underrepresentation was due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.CompareDuren,439 U.S. at 366–67, 99 S.Ct. at 669, 58 L.Ed.2d at 588(holding that an “undisputed demonstration that a large discrepancy [in the number of women versus the number of men in the jury venire] occurred not just occasionally, but in every weekly venire for a period of nearly a year manifestly indicates that the cause of the underrepresentation was systematic[,]” and stating the system of exclusion was further supported by evidence that “[in] the construction of the jury wheel from which persons are randomly summoned for service[,][l]ess than 30% of those summoned were female[,]” and “at the summons stage women were not only given another opportunity to claim exemption, but also were presumed to have claimed...