United States v. Allen
| Decision Date | 17 January 2018 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 16-10141-03-EFM,Case No. 16-10141-01-EFM,Case No. 16-10141-02-EFM |
| Parties | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. CURTIS WAYNE ALLEN, PATRICK EUGENE STEIN, GAVIN WAYNE WRIGHT, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Kansas |
This matter comes before the Court on Defendant Curtis Allen's motion seeking an order directing the Clerk of Court Jury Coordinator to issue summonses to prospective jurors from both the Wichita-Hutchinson and Dodge City jury divisions to report for jury service for Defendants' upcoming trial. The motion was joined by Defendants Patrick Stein and Gavin Wright. On January 3, 2018, the Court held a hearing on the motion. Because the Court concludes that the current plan for selecting petit jurors does not infringe upon Defendants' statutory or constitutional rights, and Defendants lack standing to challenge the plan on behalf of citizens currently excluded from petit jury service, Defendants' Motion for Order to Have Prospective Jurors Summoned from Multiple Jury Divisions (Doc. 188) is denied.
District of Kansas Local Rule 38.1 () governs the random selection of grand and petit jurors for the federal judicial District of Kansas. The jury selection plan splits the District into six jury divisions: (1) Kansas City-Leavenworth; (2) Wichita-Hutchinson; (3) Topeka; (4) Dodge City; (5) Fort Scott; and (6) Salina.1 Under the plan, eligible jurors from all six jury divisions have the opportunity to serve on a grand jury panel. The first grand jury panel sits at Kansas City, and consists of grand jurors from the Kansas City-Leavenworth and Fort Scott jury divisions. The second panel sits at Topeka, and consists of grand jurors from the Topeka and Salina jury divisions. And the third panel sits at Wichita, consisting of grand jurors from the Wichita-Hutchinson and Dodge City jury divisions.2
While the plan requires the Wichita grand jury panel to be composed of citizens from the Wichita-Hutchinson and Dodge City jury divisions, it does not impose the same requirement for petit juries. Under the plan, the clerk must maintain a qualified jury wheel for each division, composed of names from the voter registration lists.3 When ordered to assign a petit jury panel, the clerk is directed to draw names from one of these divisional qualified jury wheels.4 The plandoes not, however, require the clerk to draw from multiple jury divisions when assembling a petit jury panel.
Consistent with this guidance, the jury coordinator only summons jurors from the Wichita-Hutchinson division when a jury trial is held at the Wichita federal courthouse. The same goes for jury trials held in Kansas City and Topeka: jurors are summoned from the Kansas-City Leavenworth division when a trial is held in Kansas City, and jurors are summoned from the Topeka division when a trial is held in Topeka.5 Thus, in practice, citizens from the Dodge City, Fort Scott, and Salina jury divisions do not have the opportunity to serve as petit jurors in the District of Kansas.
This case was initiated after a grand jury returned an indictment charging Defendants—who resided within the Dodge City jury division—with one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2332a on October 19, 2016. Then, on December 14, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment that added weapons-related charges against Allen, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), and against Stein, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). And on March 16, 2017, a grand jury returned a second superseding indictment that added a civil rights conspiracy charge against all three defendants, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241, and added a charge against Wright for lying to the FBI to obstruct its investigation into this matter, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.
All of the alleged events occurred in Western Kansas within the confines of the Dodge City jury division. Yet, as Defendants point out, the citizens who live in this jury division arecurrently excluded from serving as petit jurors for the trial scheduled to take place in Wichita. Accordingly, Defendants filed this present motion asking the Court to order the Clerk of Court Jury Coordinator to issue summonses to prospective jurors from both the Wichita-Hutchinson and Dodge City jury divisions to report for service on the petit jury for the upcoming trial.
Defendants make two primary arguments in this case: (1) that the jury selection plan employed by the District of Kansas violates Defendants' right to a jury trial before a fair cross-section of the community, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 ("Jury Act"); and (2) by excluding Dodge City jury division citizens from petit jury service, the plan violates those citizens' rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, as well as rights established under the Jury Act. The Court will address each argument in turn.
Defendants first argue that the District of Kansas's method for selecting petit jurors violates their right to a jury that has been drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. More specifically, Defendants contend that they have a right to have citizens from the Dodge City jury division included in the petit jury pool. According to Defendants, the citizens of these 28 counties "live in more rural areas and are more politically conservative." As Defendants are alleging discrimination in the jury selection process, they have the burden of establishing the intentional exclusion of a legally cognizable group.6
The Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused the right to an "impartial jury" of the 7 In Taylor v. Louisiana,8 the U.S. Supreme Court declared that an essential characteristic of an impartial jury is that the jury be drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.9 The fair-cross-section requirement has also been legislatively mandated by Congress in the Jury Act.10 As the Jury Act codifies Defendants' Sixth Amendment rights, a statutory claim is evaluated under the same standards enunciated for the constitutional claim.11
Taylor mandated that "the jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community and thereby fail to be reasonably representative thereof."12 This requirement, however, is a means of assuring "not a representative jury (which the Constitution does not demand), but an impartial one (which it does)."13
In Duren v. Missouri,14 the Supreme Court set forth the criteria necessary to establish a prima facie violation of the fair-cross-section requirement. A defendant must show: (1) the group alleged to be excluded is a "distinctive group" in the community; (2) the representation ofthis group in jury venires is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) the underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury selection process.15
Defendants' constitutional challenge fails because they cannot satisfy the first requirement of the Duren test—the group alleged to be excluded is not "distinctive." The Supreme Court has declined to "precisely define the term 'distinctive group,' " but has held that the exclusion of a particular group was unobjectionable where it did not contravene the three purposes of the cross-section requirement: (1) avoiding "the possibility that the composition of juries would be arbitrarily skewed in such a way as to deny criminal defendants the benefit of the common-sense judgment of the community"; (2) avoiding an "appearance of unfairness"; and (3) ensuring against deprivation of "often historically disadvantaged groups of their right as citizens to serve on juries in criminal cases."16
The Tenth Circuit, however, has provided a three-part test for determining whether a group is distinctive.17 A defendant must prove: (1) the group is defined by a limiting quality (i.e., the group has a definite composition such as race or sex); (2) a common thread or basic similarity in attitude, idea, or experience runs through the group; and (3) a community of interests exists among members of the group such that the group's interest cannot be adequately represented if the group is excluded from the jury selection process.18
Courts addressing this issue have found that groups characterized by race, religion, ethnicity, and gender meet this distinctiveness standard.19 But that list is essentially exhaustive.20 Groups characterized by age, occupation, disability, education, and other characteristics are not distinctive under Taylor, and their exclusion does not run afoul of the Constitution.21 "Neither does a person's geographic location place that person in a distinct group."22 However, geographic location may be considered a distinctive group if the location is "profoundly culturally distinct."23
In their motion, Defendants conflate a number of different arguments and struggled to define the precise group they assert is "distinctive." Liberally interpreting Defendants' arguments, the Court identifies four groups Defendants consider to be "distinctive": (1) the entire Dodge City jury division population; (2) registered Republican voters; (3) voters who voted for President Trump in the 2016 general election; and (4) citizens who live in rural communities. The Court will address each group below.
Here, the District of Kansas jury selection plan denies every citizen residing within the Dodge City jury division the opportunity to serve as a petit juror. The question, then, is whether this "group"...
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