U.S. v. Haworth
| Decision Date | 21 November 1996 |
| Docket Number | Criminal No. 95-0491 LH. |
| Citation | 948 F.Supp. 981 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Richard HAWORTH, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Mexico |
Elizabeth M. Martinez, U.S. Attorney's Office, District New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, for Plaintiff.
Marc H. Robert, Michael V. Davis, Billy R. Blackburn, Paul J. Kennedy, Albuquerque, NM, for Defendants.
THIS MATTER comes before the Court on Defendant Bobby Barrios's Motion to Dismiss Indictment Because Jury Pool From Which Grand Jury Was Selected and Petit Jury Will Be Selected Systematically Excludes Hispanics and Others From Service (Docket No. 803), and on Defendant Haworth's Request for Deferral of Decision Regarding Defendant's Motion to Dismiss Indictment Due to Grand Jury Composition and Related Relief (Docket No. 945). The Court accepted Defendant Barrios's guilty plea after his motion was filed. Defendants Haworth and Spivey joined in Barrios's motion (Docket No. 834) and filed a supplement to the motion (Docket No. 903). Having considered the parties' memoranda and evidence submitted with their memoranda, the Court finds that an evidentiary hearing is not necessary. In addition, the Court finds that Defendant Barrios's motion and Defendant Haworth's request are not well taken and will be denied.
The original motion filed by Defendant Barrios alleged that the jury selection process in this district significantly under-represents Hispanics and certain unidentified "others," in violation of the Sixth Amendment, the Jury Selection and Service Act (JSSA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1861 et seq., and the Fifth Amendment. The motion also sought leave to acquire additional data regarding the education and home ownership status of prospective jurors. In their joinder, Defendants Haworth and Spivey contended that the jury selection process also resulted in the under-representation of members of their age group, ages 29 to 37.
Following Defendant Barrios's guilty plea, Defendants Haworth and Spivey implicitly abandoned Barrios's Fifth Amendment equal protection claims, recognizing that they lack standing to assert such claims because they are not members of the protected groups allegedly under-represented, that is, Hispanics and Native Americans. See Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 494, 97 S.Ct. 1272 1280, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977) (). At a recent conference in chambers, Defendants explicitly abandoned their request for additional jury data regarding the age of prospective jurors. Since that conference, however, Defendant Haworth has reiterated his desire for additional data regarding the age, education and home ownership status of prospective jurors. Therefore, the Court will first address the request for additional statistical information. The Court will then analyze Defendants' substantive claims.
Defendants have presented no evidence suggesting that persons under age 40, persons who have achieved certain education levels or persons who do or do not own their homes constitute distinctive groups which must necessarily be included in the fair cross section of the community from which juries are selected. A "distinctive group" for Sixth Amendment purposes must have qualities defining the group, cohesiveness, and a community of interest not represented by other groups in the community. United States v. Test, 550 F.2d 577, 591 (10th Cir.1976). There is no evidence regarding any of these attributes, and Defendants have not even argued that the groups in question are distinctive from the general population. Therefore, discovery of the requested data will be an exercise in futility. See also Anaya v. Hansen, 781 F.2d 1, 8 (1st Cir.1986) (); United States v. Kleifgen, 557 F.2d 1293, 1296 (9th Cir.1977) (same); Ford v. Seabold, 841 F.2d 677, 682 (6th Cir.), (young adults are not a distinctive group), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 928, 109 S.Ct. 315, 102 L.Ed.2d 334 (1988). The request for additional juror data is denied.
Defendants assert four primary grounds for their request that the Court defer ruling on the jury composition motion. They contend the decision should be deferred because: (1) the disparities found on the Las Cruces/Roswell division jury wheels will likely result in a district-wide change in the jury selection process; (2) Defendants still do not have the juror data regarding age, home ownership and education; (3) accurate disparities assessment depends on ascertaining which qualified jurors make up the pool of jurors who actually appear for jury service; and (4) this Court and the parties to this case should participate in the evidentiary hearing Judge Vásquez is conducting in connection with a similar jury composition challenge in United States v. Gonzales, Criminal No. 95-538. These asserted grounds are without merit.
First, the disparities on the Las Cruces/Roswell jury wheels are irrelevant to this inquiry, which involves the Albuquerque/Santa Fe division. See, e.g., United States v. Bahna, 68 F.3d 19, 24 (2nd Cir. 1995) (), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 116 S.Ct. 1682, 134 L.Ed.2d 784 (1996). Second, the Court has denied Defendants' request for additional juror data. Third, the Tenth Circuit in United States v. Yazzie, 660 F.2d 422 (10th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 923, 102 S.Ct. 1282, 71 L.Ed.2d 464 (1982) clearly sanctioned the use of the qualified wheel as the basis for analyzing absolute disparities. Yazzie, 660 F.2d at 427, 431. There is therefore no need to determine which qualified jurors appeared for service. Fourth, Defendants themselves admit that they lack standing to participate in the Gonzales hearing, and they cite no authority permitting the participation of this Court or the parties to this case.
On December 2, 1988, all judges of this Court concurred in the adoption of a plan for the random selection of jurors pursuant to the JSSA. See In re Amendment of the Court's Jury Plan, Misc. No. 6175. According to the plan, the district is divided into three divisions, including the Albuquerque/Santa Fe division from which the grand jury in this case was selected and from which the petit jury will be selected. Voter registration lists are the source of all prospective jurors. When the clerk of the court determines how many prospective jurors are needed in a particular division, that number of jurors is drawn randomly from voter registration lists. The names selected in this fashion make up the Master Jury Wheel. The clerk of the court then determines how many prospective jurors will be needed to create a qualified jury wheel and randomly selects that number. Each of the selected prospects is sent a questionnaire regarding juror qualifications. The questionnaire asks the recipient to identify his or her race as black, Asian, white, American Indian or other. It also asks the recipient whether he or she is Hispanic. When the questionnaires are returned, the clerk determines if each prospective juror is qualified and not exempt. Those that are qualified and not exempt make up the Qualified Juror Wheel. Jury panels are randomly selected from the Qualified Juror Wheel.
The grand jury in this case was drawn from the 1993 Qualified Juror Wheel for the Albuquerque/Santa Fe division, and the petit jury will be selected from the same division's 1995 Qualified Juror Wheel. The Tenth Circuit instructs us to look to the qualified jury wheel in analyzing jury composition challenges. United States v. Yazzie, 660 F.2d at 427, 431.
Defendants claim that the two groups substantially under-represented as a result of the jury selection process are Hispanics and Native Americans. The data from the 1993 and 1995 Qualified Wheels indicate the number of prospective jurors who identified themselves as Hispanic or Native American. However, 68 of the 1025 jurors on the 1993 Qualified Wheel, and 93 of the 1186 jurors on the 1995 Qualified Wheel did not indicate their race and/or whether they were Hispanic. Therefore, in analyzing the statistical data, the Court has excluded these unidentified jurors from the total number on each qualified wheel. See, e.g., United States v. Biaggi, 680 F.Supp. 641, 646 (S.D.N.Y.1988), aff'd, 909 F.2d 662 (2nd Cir.1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 904, 111 S.Ct. 1102, 113 L.Ed.2d 213 (1991). Thus, for purposes of the present analysis, the total number of jurors on the 1993 Qualified Wheel is 957 instead of 1025, and on the 1995 Qualified Wheel, 1093 instead of 1186.
The data from the relevant wheels are as follows:
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| | `93 Qualified Wheel | `95 Qualified Wheel |
|-------------------|----------------------|----------------------|
| Hispanic | 28.11% (269 of 957) | 29.37% (321 of 1093) |
|-------------------|----------------------|----------------------|
| Native American | 6.79% (65 of 957) | 6.86% (75 of 1093) |
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Data from the 1990 Census indicate that Hispanics comprise 35.11% of the voter eligible population in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe division, and Native Americans comprise 10.05%. Therefore, the discrepancies between the relevant groups of jurors and the same groups in the population are as follows:
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| DISCREPANCY (as | `93 Qualified Wheel | `95 Qualified Wheel |
| compared to census figures) | |...To continue reading
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U.S. v. Taylor, 07-CR-1244 WPJ.
...of statisticians to exclude the unidentified category when the focus is on a variable such as race or ethnicity); United States v. Haworth, 948 F.Supp. 981, 984 (D.N.M.1996) (excluding unidentified jurors from the disparity calculations). Because neither party has provided the correct stati......
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U.S. v. Gault, CR 95-229 JP.
...Column II, I excluded these unidentified jurors from the total number in each Qualified Juror Wheel. See U.S. v. Haworth, 948 F.Supp. 981, 984 (D.N.M. 1996) (Judge C. Leroy Hansen) (also excluding the unidentified jurors). I calculated the percentages shown in Column II by using a total num......