U.S. v. Guy

• Decision Date: 07 February 1991
• Docket Number: No. 90-1532,90-1532
• Citation: 924 F.2d 702
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Marvin Louis GUY, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 702

924 F.2d 702

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Marvin Louis GUY, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 90-1532.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 26, 1990.

Decided Feb. 7, 1991.

Christina McKee, Asst. U.S. Atty., Indianapolis, Ind., for plaintiff-appellee.

Marcie E. Goldbloom, Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellant.

Before BAUER, Chief Judge, WOOD and RIPPLE, Circuit Judges.

BAUER, Chief Judge.

The defendant-appellant, Marvin Louis Guy, was tried and found guilty of one count of bank robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. Secs. 2113(a). Guy was sentenced to a prison term of fifty-seven months, followed by sixty months of supervised release. In this appeal, Guy claims that he was denied his sixth amendment right to a fair trial before an impartial jury. Specifically, Guy attacks the jury composition and selection process and the district court's refusal to provide the jury with a copy of a witness's testimony during deliberation. For the reasons discussed in this opinion, we reject Guy's claims and affirm his conviction.

I.

On Friday, February 3, 1989, at approximately 9:00 a.m., the Speedway Banking Center Branch of Banc One Indianapolis was robbed by a young African-American male wearing a dark waist-length jacket, tennis shoes and a black stocking cap. An audit of the bank determined that $1,272.00 was taken. Marvin Louis Guy ultimately was charged with this robbery, and on December 4, a twelve-member petit jury was impanelled to hear the evidence against him. All the venirepersons, and consequently all the resulting petit jurors, were Caucasians. Guy is African-American. During the voir dire examination of the prospective jurors, Guy objected to the racial composition of the panel, that is, to the fact that there would be no members of his race on the petit jury. Specifically, Guy challenged the method by which prospective jurors were chosen, claiming that the population from which the prospective jurors were drawn included a significant percentage of African-Americans. Guy argued that there should be some members of the African-American community in his pool of prospective jurors. Yet because Guy could provide no factual evidence to support his claim that the method of selecting prospective jurors was improper, the district court overruled his objection and proceeded with the voir dire.

The evidence adduced at trial implicated Guy as the robber of the Banc One. Several witnesses testified to seeing the above-described black male rob the bank, flee the scene in a blue Ford automobile with another black male, park the blue Ford in the lot at the Carriage House Apartment Complex, set the blue car on fire, and then leave the parking lot in another vehicle. The government's key witness was Darrin McDaniels, who also was charged with the robbery of Banc One. McDaniels, who pleaded guilty to the robbery, testified that he drove the get-away car after Guy robbed the bank. McDaniels' testimony gave a chronological account of the robbery and the flight from the bank. His testimony was largely corroborated by other witnesses who gave similar descriptions of the robber and the robbery. Although there were some differences in the witnesses' testimony concerning the manner in which McDaniels and Guy came and went from the apartment complex, these inconsistencies apparently were insufficient in the jury's opinion to raise any reasonable doubt regarding Guy's guilt.

After about one and one-half hours of deliberation, the jury sent a note to the judge requesting a copy of McDaniels' testimony. After hearing the arguments of counsel regarding the jury's request, the district court declined to send a copy of the McDaniels' testimony into the jury room. The court determined that giving the jury a copy of one witness's testimony would unduly highlight that testimony in the minds of the jurors. The court noted that it was a relatively short trial, lasting only one and one-half days, and thus the jurors should have no trouble recalling all the testimony. After three and one-half more hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. On February 27, 1990, Guy was sentenced to the above-described prison term. Guy filed a timely notice of appeal.

II.

Guy raises three claims on appeal. First, he renews his claim that the method of selecting prospective jurors violated his right to an impartial jury guaranteed by the sixth amendment. Second, Guy claims that the district judge failed to overcome the bias of the Caucasian jurors with an adequate voir dire. Third, he claims that the district court abused its discretion by denying the jury's request for a copy of McDaniels' testimony. We will consider each of these claims in turn.

A. Selection of Prospective Jurors

The jury panel in this case was selected in accordance with The Plan for the Random Selection of Grand and Petit Jurors ("The Plan"), as authorized by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, effective November 1, 1985, and amended February 3, 1989. The Plan directs that the clerk of the court, under the supervision and control of the judges of the court, manage the jury selection process. For jury selection purposes, the Southern District of Indiana is divided into four divisions: the Indianapolis Division, the Terre Haute Division, the Evansville Division, and the New Albany Division. The Indianapolis Division, from which the jurors were drawn in the present case, consists of twenty-six counties located in and around the City of Indianapolis in the central part of the state.

The Plan states that, because Indiana law provides a uniform system of voter registration in all counties throughout the state, the voter registration lists represent a fair cross section of the community in the Southern District of Indiana. The Plan requires that the names of all registered voters in the Southern District of Indiana be placed in a pool from which random selections are made for the venire. Potential grand and petit jurors are, thus, chosen at random from the master voter registration lists for each county. The total number of names drawn for each division depends upon whatever the court deems sufficient for its grand and petit jury needs for a four-year period. The Plan concludes that this method of random selection of potential jurors from the voter registration lists ensures that the mathematical odds of any single registered voter being called for service are substantially equal.

The Supreme Court has determined that "the selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial." Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 528, 95 S.Ct. 692, 697, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975). In order to establish a prima facie violation of the fair cross-section requirement, Guy 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 v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 668, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979). See also United States v. McAnderson, 914 F.2d 934, 941 (7th Cir.1990); Humphrey v. United States, 896 F.2d 1066, 1069 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 342, 112 L.Ed.2d 306 (1990). Once Guy has made a prima facie showing as to these elements, the burden shifts to the state to show that an overriding, significant state interest is manifestly advanced by those aspects of the jury selection process that result in the disproportionate exclusion of a distinctive group. Duren, 439 U.S. at 367, 99 S.Ct. at 670. See also Davis v. Warden, 867 F.2d 1003, 1006 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 285, 107 L.Ed.2d 264 (1989).

The parties do not dispute that African-Americans form a distinct group in the community. See Davis, 867 F.2d at 1006 (citing Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1880)). Thus, there is no question that Guy satisfies the first prong of Duren. Although posing somewhat greater difficulty, Guy may have satisfied Duren 's second prong as well. Under this second prong, Guy must prove that the representation of African-Americans on the venire from which the petit jury was chosen was not fair and reasonable in relation to their number in the community. Davis, 867 F.2d at 1006. Here the relevant community is the twenty-six counties composing the Indianapolis Division of the Southern District of Indiana. To support his claim that the representation of African-Americans on the venire was not reasonable given the number of African-Americans in the community, Guy argues that the absence of any African-Americans on the venire failed to represent the significant percentage of African-Americans in the Indianapolis Division. ¹ The government did not quarrel with these facts, but instead argued that, even assuming underrepresentation, Guy still could not demonstrate any systematic exclusion of African-Americans. ² Thus, the resolution of Guy's claim turns on the third prong of Duren: whether Guy has demonstrated the systematic exclusion of African-Americans in his case.

The district court held that Guy had not satisfied this third prong. (Though the court did not specifically mention the Duren test by name, its grounds for rejecting Guy's challenges to the jury can fairly be characterized as a third-prong failure under Duren.) We agree. As the district court noted, the venire in Guy's case was randomly selected pursuant to an authorized plan. Guy presented no evidence to suggest that the lack of any African-American jurors on his panel was due to anything other than mere coincidence. ³ Guy's mere observation that there were no African-Americans on a panel...