State v. Lilly
| Decision Date | 04 February 2022 |
| Docket Number | No. 20-0617,20-0617 |
| Citation | 969 N.W.2d 794 |
| Parties | STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Kenneth Lee LILLY, Appellant. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Martha J. Lucey, State Appellate Defender, and Shellie L. Knipfer (argued), Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Louis S. Sloven (argued) and Andrew Prosser, Assistant Attorneys General, for appellee.
David S. Walker, Windsor Heights, and Russell E. Lovell, II (argued), Des Moines, for amicus curiae NAACP.
McDermott, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all justices joined. Mansfield, J., filed a concurrence, in which Appel, J., joined. McDonald, J., filed a concurrence, in which Christensen, C.J., and Waterman, J., joined.
A jury in North Lee County found Kenneth Lilly guilty of aiding and abetting a bank robbery. Lilly, an African-American, appealed his conviction, arguing that his right to an impartial jury under both the United States and Iowa Constitutions had been violated because neither his jury nor even the jury panel contained any African-Americans. On appeal, we remanded the case to give Lilly an opportunity to develop his impartial-jury arguments in response to refinements to how a defendant must prove a constitutional violation that we explained in several cases after his trial. The district court ultimately rejected Lilly's further-developed claims. Lilly now appeals that ruling, arguing that the district court erred in holding that he failed to prove a violation.
We described the underlying facts from Lilly's trial and earlier procedural history of this case in the opinion filed in Lilly's initial appeal and will forego restating them here. See State v. Lilly (Lilly I ), 930 N.W.2d 293, 296–98 (Iowa 2019). Pertinent to this appeal are the facts that the parties developed on remand related to the only remaining issue in the case: Lilly's fair-cross-section claim.
In State v. Plain (Plain II ), we defined the terms "jury pool" (the members of the community selected for jury duty and summoned and reporting to the courthouse), "jury panel" (the members of the pool directed to a particular courtroom to serve as possible jurors for a specific trial), and "jury" (the members of the panel actually selected for a specific trial), and will use the same definitions in this case. 969 N.W.2d 293, 295 (Iowa 2022).
Evidence offered at Lilly's hearing on remand showed that of the people summoned who indicated their race on a summoned-juror questionnaire, one person marked "Other," one marked "American," one marked "Asian," one marked "Japanese," and one marked "White/Black." Ultimately, none of the potential jurors in Lilly's pool were African-American, and (thus) none of the members of Lilly's jury were African-American. Lilly called only one witness at the hearing, the jury manager for Lee County, who testified about how the jury selection process worked in the county at the time of Lilly's trial.
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to "an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." U.S. Const. amend VI. The Iowa Constitution similarly guarantees the right to a "trial by an impartial jury." Iowa Const. art. I, § 10. The constitutional guarantees of an impartial jury entitle the accused to a jury "drawn from a fair cross-section of the community." State v. Plain (Plain I ), 898 N.W.2d 801, 821 (Iowa 2017).
A defendant establishes a prima facie violation of the fair-cross-section requirement by showing that (1) a group alleged to have been excluded is a "distinctive" group in the community, (2) the group's representation in jury pools is not "fair and reasonable" when considered against the group's percentage in the community, and (3) the group's underrepresentation "is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process." Id. at 822 (quoting Duren v. Missouri , 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979) ). The defendant bears the burden of proof to show a prima facie violation of the fair-cross-section requirement. Plain I , 898 N.W.2d at 821–22 ; Lilly I , 930 N.W.2d at 299 ; see also Duren , 439 U.S. at 363–64, 99 S.Ct. 664.
The State concedes the first Duren / Plain prong and thus that African Americans constitute a distinctive group in the community. The dispute centers on the second and third prongs. The district court held that Lilly failed to prove either one. We review challenges alleging the denial of constitutional rights—in this case, the right to an impartial jury—de novo and thus evaluate the evidence anew without deferring to the district court's findings. Lilly I , 930 N.W.2d at 298.
We will begin our analysis on the third prong, since an inability to establish any one of the three Duren / Plain elements is fatal to a defendant's fair-cross-section challenge. In Lilly I , we explained that to establish the third prong a defendant must prove that the underrepresentation resulted from a particular feature (or features) of the jury selection system. Id. at 306. The defendant, in other words, "must tie the disparity to a particular practice" and show that the practice caused the systematic exclusion of the distinctive group in the jury selection process. Id. at 307.
Lilly points to a single jury management practice to prove his claim of African-American underrepresentation in jury pools. He targets the lists—voter registration, driver's license, and nonoperator identification—that are combined to form the source list from which people are randomly selected for jury pools. Lilly's argument then proceeds with several factual propositions. He first asserts that low-income people tend to register to vote and to acquire driver's licenses and nonoperator identification cards at a lower rate than other members of the community. He next asserts that African-Americans make up a higher percentage of low-income people in Lee County. Taking these premises together, Lilly infers that African-Americans register to vote and get driver's licenses and nonoperator identification cards at lower rates than other races. African-Americans are, following this logic, underrepresented in the lists from which jury pools are sourced. From this conclusion, Lilly argues that failing to supplement the source list with other lists that might include more lower-income people amounts to "mismanagement" resulting in the systemic exclusion of African-Americans.
A. Analysis Under the Sixth Amendment. Lilly presents his arguments both under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and under article I, section 10 of the Iowa Constitution. An important distinction exists in how we analyze claims under the two constitutions. In State v. Veal (Veal I ), we held that for a Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section claim, the defendant "must identify some practice or combination of practices that led to the underrepresentation, and it must be something other than the ‘laundry list’ the Supreme Court declined to condemn in Berghuis ." 930 N.W.2d 319, 330 (Iowa 2019) (quoting Berghuis v. Smith , 559 U.S. 314, 332, 130 S.Ct. 1382, 176 L.Ed.2d 249 (2010) ). Challenges to "run-of-the-mill" jury management practices are thus insufficient to show systematic exclusion under the Sixth Amendment. Id. at 329, 130 S.Ct. 1382. We described run-of-the-mill jury management practices in Lilly I as "the relatively commonplace" practices that might include, for instance, practices for updating juror address lists, excusing potential jurors for hardship or other reasons, and enforcing jury summonses. 930 N.W.2d at 308. These common jury practices fall within a state's "broad discretion," according to the Supreme Court in Berghuis , and will not sustain a Sixth Amendment cross-section challenge. 559 U.S. at 333, 130 S.Ct. 1382 (quoting Taylor v. Louisiana , 419 U.S. 522, 537–38, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975) ).
The practice of using the state's own voter registration list, motor vehicle operator list, and nonoperator identification list to construct a source list from which to draw jury pools amounts to a commonplace, run-of-the-mill practice. Courts in jurisdictions around the country have upheld the use of voter registrations lists (without the addition of another list) as a jury-pool source. See United States v. Orange , 447 F.3d 792, 800 (10th Cir. 2006) ; United States v. Sanchez , 156 F.3d 875, 879 (8th Cir. 1998) (). Lilly acknowledges that "[i]t has been the practice for district courts to solely use the lists provided"—the very lists he challenges in this case—to create jury pools. These lists are the only ones that the Iowa Code requires courts to use in drawing jury pools. Iowa Code § 607A.22(1) (2017). The challenged practice alleged to have caused the underrepresentation under the third prong "must be something other than" the run-of-the-mill practices that the Supreme Court has declined to condemn. Veal I , 930 N.W.2d at 330 (citing Berghuis , 559 U.S. at 332, 130 S.Ct. 1382 ). Use of the source list to draw jury pools is, perhaps, as garden-variety a practice as one could find. Because he challenges a run-of-the-mill practice, and no other practices, Lilly cannot show a violation under the Sixth Amendment.
B. Analysis Under the Iowa Constitution. Lilly's claim under article I, section 10 of the Iowa Constitution requires a different analysis. In Lilly I , we held that...
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