Atwell v. Blackburn 800 F.2d 502

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge:

Rennie Gordon Atwell, who is serving a life sentence in the Louisiana state penitentiary, appeals from the district court’s denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. Atwell asserts two primary grounds for relief. First, he claims that he was indicted by a grand jury that did not represent a fair cross-section of the community as required by the United States Constitution. Second, he contends that the state’s failure to disclose prior arrest and conviction records of potential state witnesses and jurors and potential jurors’ voting records violated his due process rights. Finding that Atwell has failed to demonstrate a constitutional violation, we affirm.

Facts and Proceedings Below

In early 1975, the Orleans Parish Jury Commissioners ceased requiring process servers to serve jury duty summons in the New Orleans Desire Housing Project because of violence in that area. The service of jury duty summons was resumed by August or September of 1975. On March 1, 1975, during the time that summons were not being served in the heart of the Desire housing project, a grand jury was impaneled, which continued until August 31, 1975. On April 3, 1975, petitioner At-well was indicted by this grand jury for first degree murder. Atwell was convicted for first degree murder on February 18, *5041976,1 by a petit jury selected after service of jury duty summons in the Desire project had been resumed. The Louisiana trial court sentenced Atwell to life imprisonment without benefit of pardon, parole, commutation, or suspension of sentence.

The Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed Atwell’s conviction and sentence on direct appeal, finding that the trial court had properly denied Atwell’s motion to quash his indictment, but remanded for a hearing to determine whether the state had violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), by failing to disclose prior arrest and conviction records of its potential witnesses. State v. Harvey, 358 So.2d 1224 (La.1978). After a hearing on remand, the trial court found that, at the time of Atwell’s trial, the state had no knowledge of any prior convictions of its witnesses and that there was no evidence that the state's witnesses had any prior arrests or convictions. On appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed. State v. Harvey, 369 So.2d 134 (La.1979). Atwell was represented by counsel throughout his state trial, appeal, proceedings on remand, and subsequent appeal.

Atwell filed this habeas corpus petition in the district court for the Eastern District of Louisiana pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The state concedes that Atwell has exhausted his state remedies. The district court referred the case to a magistrate, but later revoked the order and, without a hearing, denied relief on all grounds.2

Discussion

Cross-Section Claim

Atwell seeks federal habeas relief based on his claim that exclusion of the Desire housing project residents violated his constitutional right to a fair cross-section of the community on the panel from which his grand jury was drawn. See Eggleston v. Estelle, 513 F.2d 758, 760-61 (5th Cir.1975). In State v. Cage, 337 So.2d 1123 (La.1976), the Louisiana Supreme Court addressed a challenge by Harry Cage of the identical grand jury that indicted Atwell. See State v. Ferguson, 358 So.2d 1214, 1222 (La.1978) (Summers, J., concurring). The Louisiana Supreme Court held that the exclusion of Desire housing project residents from jury service, though not improperly motivated, nevertheless violated Cage’s federal and state constitutional rights “because the exclusion was deliber*505ate and involved a sizeable and distinctive group in the community.” Cage, 337 So.2d at 1125. It sustained the trial judge’s quashing of Cage’s indictment. Atwell, prior to his trial, moved through his counsel to quash his indictment on the ground that residents of the Desire project were not being served with jury duty summonses when his grand jury was selected. A copy of the transcript of the testimony at Cage’s hearing on this subject was introduced in support of Atwell’s motion and considered by the trial court, which nevertheless overruled the motion. On direct appeal of Atwell’s conviction, the Louisiana Supreme Court sustained the trial court’s refusal to quash Atwell’s indictment because of its decision that same day in Ferguson, 358 So.2d at 1216-17, that Cage should be applied prospectively only to ve-nires selected after the date of the Cage decision. Harvey, 358 So.2d at 1229-30.

Because we are not bound by the Louisiana Supreme Court’s interpretation of the United States Constitution, we must determine whether Atwell established in the federal district court that he is entitled to habeas relief.3 Atwell, as habeas petitioner, bears the burden of proving, at the least, that a constitutionally distinctive group or identifiable segment of the community was purposefully excluded from his grand jury venire by the jury selection process. In Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979), the Supreme Court articulated the showing necessary to establish a violation of the Sixth Amendment fair cross-section requirement. The defendant 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 underre-presentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.” Id. at 668.

In addressing the underrepresentation requirement, the Duren Court stated: “Initially, the defendant must demonstrate the percentage of the community made up of the group alleged to be underrepresented, for this is the conceptual benchmark for the Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section requirement.” Id. Furthermore, the defendant must show that the underrepresentation of the group at issue “generally and on his venire, was due to their systematic exclusion in the jury selection process.” Id. at 669 (emphasis added). Once the defendant has made a prima facie showing, the state may justify the infringement “by showing attainment of a fair cross section to be incompatible with a significant state interest.” Id. at 671.4

*506Because Atwell has not established that the failure to serve jury duty summonses in the Desire housing project caused residents of that project to be underrepresented on his grand jury venire, we find that his claim in this connection must fail. At the state trial court hearing on Atwell’s motion to quash his indictment, the state and the defense entered into a stipulation concerning the testimony offered in the Cage case by the Chairman of the Orleans Parish Jury Commissioners. The trial court entered the transcript of the December 15, 1975 evidentiary hearing conducted on the motion to quash in the Cage case into Atwell’s trial court record. Atwell presented no additional evidence to the state court in support of his motion to quash.5 Atwell asserts that his evidence is the same as the Cage evidence and does not suggest that he sought to offer, either before the state trial court or the federal district court, any evidence other than the transcript of the testimony at the Cage hearing.

The transcript of the testimony at the Cage hearing on the grand jury selection reflects that, during the time the grand jury at issue was impaneled, service of jury duty summons was discontinued in the Desire housing project, or at least in “the heart” of the project.6 Also, a housing project statistician testified that in October 1975 there were 9,531 residents in the housing project and that the entire Desire population was black.7 In addition, the Chairman of the Orleans Parish Jury Commissioners testified that, in impaneling a grand jury, venires of seventy-five persons were drawn from the Register of Voters,8 and that the trial court judge selected the grand jury from the venire. There was no evidence that any Desire resident (or a resident from the heart of the project) was selected for Atwell’s venire. Nor was there any evidence as to the number of registered voters in the Desire project or the statistical likelihood that a Desire resident would have been chosen. Moreover, there was no evidence concerning the proportion in Orleans Parish of persons with demographic characteristics similar to those in the Desire project. The Jury Commission Chairman did testify that the seventy-five-person grand jury venires were usually forty-five to fifty-five percent black. There was no other evidence of the racial or socio-economic makeup of the particular venire or of Atwell’s grand jury which was chosen from it. Just as in Preston (where the record apparently contained all the same evidence as here, plus other evidence), we conclude that “no evidence was presented that in the selection process for” Atwell’s grand jury venire “names of any Desire residents were chosen for the wheel to be served in the first place,” id. at 101 (footnote omitted), and the Desire group “is so small that we may not infer, as a statistical matter, that some number *507of them must necessarily have been included in the venire chosen from the wheel.” Id. at 102.9 Accordingly, Atwell has tendered no prima fade showing that the practice of not serving within the Desire project affected the make-up of his grand jury venire. The district court correctly ruled that no constitutional defect was shown respecting the selection of the grand jury.10

Due Process Brady v. Maryland Claim

Atwell also contends that the state failed to disclose to him prior arrest and conviction records of its potential witnesses in response to his pretrial request in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). In ruling on Atwell’s direct appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court, relying on United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976), remanded for a hearing to determine whether there was suppression of material “for which there was a substantial basis for claiming that materiality existed,” 358 So.2d at 1233. After the remand hearing, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s finding that *508the state had not suppressed information requested by the defendants. 369 So.2d at 134.

Factual determinations made by a state court after a full and fair hearing on the merits are entitled to a presumption of correctness. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 101 S.Ct. 764, 767-69, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981). Unless we determine that the state court’s factual finding is not “fairly supported by the record,” Atwell must establish by “convincing evidence” that the factual determination was erroneous. Id. at 771. We hold that the state court’s determination is supported by the record. Atwell’s claim that the state attorney who testified at the remand hearing was not familiar with the circumstances of Atwell’s trial is unsupported as the attorney demonstrated sufficient knowledge of the circumstances of Atwell’s trial. He denied any prosecution knowledge of any prior record of the witnesses. The defense counsel stated that he was not aware of any prior convictions of the state witnesses, although he said defendants (Atwell and Harvey) “do believe there was prior arrests, but not any prior convictions.” Atwell simply did not make out a Brady or Agurs violation at his state hearing. There was no evidence or tender of evidence that any of the witnesses had any convictions or arrests. So far as the record reflects, this was purely unsupported, general speculation on the part of the defense.11

Atwell also challenges the trial court’s denial of his request for prior arrest and conviction records of potential jurors. The Louisiana Supreme Court, accepting as true Atwell’s allegations that the state had this information and intended to use it in jury selection, and that he could not obtain it from other sources, held that Atwell was entitled either to be given the information or to question the prospective jurors. Finding no indication that Atwell was demed the right to question prospective jurors, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s decision. 358 So.2d at 1230-32. We find that Atwell has failed to establish that this information would be material to his case. He does not assert that he was prevented from questioning the prospective jurors. In addition, he has failed to allege any facts supporting his claim that some prospective jurors had criminal records and that this information was suppressed by the state.

Finally, Atwell also asserts a due process violation in the trial court’s denial of his motion to examine the prior voting records of prospective jurors, which was affirmed by the Louisiana Supreme Court. 358 So.2d at 1231. Again, Atwell has not established that this information would be material to his case or that he was unable to obtain this information on the jury voir dire. Accordingly, we find that Atwell has not established a due process violation.

Conclusion

Finding that Atwell’s claims are without merit, we affirm the district court’s denial of the writ of habeas corpus.

AFFIRMED.

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,

dissenting:

The majority’s opinion today wrongly applies the burden of proof standards set out in Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979), for establishing a prima facie case of unconstitutional deprivation of a grand jury constituted from a fair cross-section of the community. In particular, the court would require defendant to demonstrate underrepresentation, notwithstanding direct proof of intentional, systematic exclusion of an identifiable group. Ante at 505-06. Because the appropriate benchmark for analysis is Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. *509217, 66 S.Ct. 984, 90 L.Ed. 1181 (1946), I respectfully dissent.1

A. Direct Prima Facie Case and Burden of Proof

Duren was a case in which the defendant attempted to demonstrate statistical un-derrepresentation of women from grand jury venires on the basis of their potential to claim automatic exemptions. It did not rest on direct allegations of intentional exclusion of women from grand juries. Rather, Duren supplied standards to determine when statistics can raise a prima facie inference of intentional exclusion of an identifiable group. “[I]n order to establish a prima facie case, it was necessary for petitioner to show that the underrepresentation of women, generally and on his venire, was due to their systematic exclusion in the jury-selection process.” 99 S.Ct. at 669 (emphasis added).

Duren thus provides guidance to efforts to “reason backwards” from suspicious statistics of underrepresentation to an impermissible cause of the underrepresentation, purposeful exclusion. It is such exclusion, or intentional discrimination, that is the harm.2 Inferential assistance from statistical analysis is not necessary where the harm of exclusion can be shown directly, as it has been here.

Where there is direct evidence of intentional discrimination, the proper starting point is Thiel, not Duren. In Thiel, the Court based its findings of impermissible, purposeful exclusion on direct testimonial evidence of a clerk of the court and of a jury commissioner. The clerk and commissioner refused to place names of day-laborers in jury venire lists because those individuals allegedly would request and receive excuses for financial hardship. Without requiring any showing that day-laborers would have been members of Thiel’s venire absent purposeful exclusion, the Supreme Court found an unconstitutional exclusion of an identifiable group.

Wage earners, including those who are paid by the day, constitute a very substantial portion of the community, a portion that cannot be intentionally and systematically excluded in whole or in part without doing violence to the democratic nature of the jury system. Were we to sanction an exclusion of this nature we would encourage whatever desires those responsible for the selection of jury panels may have to discriminate against per*510sons of low economic and social sta-tus____ It follows that we cannot sanction the method by which the jury panel was formed in this case____ On that basis it becomes unnecessary to determine whether the petitioner was in any way prejudiced by the wrongful exclusion or whether he was one of the excluded class____ It is likewise immaterial that the jury which actually decided the factual issue in the case was found to contain at least five members of the laboring class. The evil lies in the admitted wholesale exclusion of a large class of wage earners in disregard of the high standards of jury selection.

Thiel, 66 S.Ct. at 987-88 (footnote and citations omitted) (emphasis added).

Thiel thus elucidates the foundational tenet of American jurisprudence that any party to a lawsuit who is entitled to a jury shall have her jury selected according to a process that is free from the taint of purposeful discrimination. This tenet becomes bedrock when the party is a defendant to a charge of murder and the identifiable group and the discrimination alleged are racial. See, e.g., Strauder v. West Virginia, 10 Otto 303, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1880). The majority in today’s case would have us dissolve the bedrock and dilute those high standards by forming a constitutionally opaque solution and requiring a needless search for unconstitutional precipitate.

In particular, the majority would require defendant Atwell to establish prejudice, by providing some evidence that unserved potential jurors in the Desire project were actually excluded from his venire. Ante at 506-507. This could be directly established by proof of nonservice on those ve-nire members chosen from the wheel for Atwell’s indictment, or indirectly by statistical evidence raising the inference that an unserved Desire resident would have been included in Atwell’s venire. Like Diogenes’ search through Athens for an honest man, such additional requirements are burdensome and unnecessary in light of Thiel's specific injunction against a harm inquiry.3 They also are fundamentally unfair in plain view of Atwell’s right to a grand jury selection process free from taint.4

*511The serious nature of the discrimination demonstrated by Atwell does not permit the State to speculate that no harm could have resulted.5 It requires the Government to demonstrate that no harm actually resulted as a logical certainty. As the Cage court determined, this requires a showing that all of the individuals chosen for Atwell’s venire were served, and that the jury selection process was therefore free from taint.

B. Failure of the Louisiana Supreme Court to Apply Cage

The Louisiana Supreme Court in Cage found that “the jury commission discontinued the service of subpoenas upon persons residing in the project during the preparation of the venire from which the grand jury was selected in this case.” 337 So.2d at 1123. When confronted by Atwell’s appeal, that Court acknowledged that the Cage “motion to quash [was] based upon the identical grounds advanced by the present defendant [Atwell].” State v. Harvey, 358 So.2d 1224, 1230 (La.1978) (emphasis added). The Louisiana Supreme Court, however, relying on its ruling in State v. Ferguson, 358 So.2d 1214 (La.1978), and on the fact that the practices were terminated, refused to apply Cage retroactively to Atwell’s indictment. Harvey, 358 So.2d at 1230. Ferguson states:

We have determined that Cage should be applied only prospectively to jury ve-nires improperly constituted by reason of the practices reprobated by the Cage holding, especially since the practices were terminated as a result of the Cage decision. The interest at stake (proper selection of jury venires) has been adequately served by Cage and the corrective measures thereafter instituted. No individual unfairness has resulted in the present case.

*512As in Daniel v. Louisiana, 420 U.S. 31, 95 S.Ct. 704, 42 L.Ed.2d 790 (1975), the application of Cage prospectively only to venires selected after the date of its decision, will adequately vindicate the constitutional interest at stake____ Under these circumstances, the vindication of the constitutional interest protected by Cage does not require reversal of other convictions, fairly tried before petit juries selected from properly confected ve-nires, because of Cage defects in the method of selecting the grand jury which indicted the accused.

358 So.2d at 1216-17.

The failure of the Louisiana Supreme Court to grant retroactive effect to Cage should not be given any credence by federal courts. First, the Louisiana Supreme Court, in stating that no individual unfairness has resulted, either relied upon suspect “harmless error” analysis or failed to appreciate the necessity for mandatory reversal. If this were not sufficient, the Louisiana Supreme Court misapplied Daniel.

Daniel itself considered whether the “decision in Taylor v. Louisiana [wa]s to be applied retroactively to other defendants whose opportunity to raise a timely objection to the jury-selection procedures had passed as of the date of [the] decision in Taylor.” 95 S.Ct. at 705 (emphasis added). Since defendant Atwell raised a timely objection at his trial, based upon the Cage testimony and the quashing of Cage’s indictment, Daniel is wholly inapposite. Further, Cage did not enunciate new legal standards, but followed Thiel; there is thus nothing to apply retroactively under Daniel. Even were there some question whether the Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision should be “retroactively” applied, the Cage affirmance should relate back to the Cage trial court’s quashing of the indictment, requiring prospective application in Atwell’s case.

C. The District Court’s Denial of Habeas Corpus

The District Court relied upon Preston v. Maggio, 741 F.2d 99, 101-02 (5th Cir.1984), cert. denied — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 2334, 85 L.Ed.2d 850 (1985), to require that defendant Atwell demonstrate that “Desire residents were selected for service on the grand jury which indicted him, but were not served with a subpoena summoning them for that duty.” Federal Record at 75. Because of Atwell’s purported failure to meet habeas standards of prima facie proof, the District Court did not reach the retroactivity issue. Id. at 73 n. 3.

The District Court’s reliance on Preston is flawed, and Preston itself is subject to question in light of Thiel and Hillery. The District Court relied on language in Preston requiring defendant to demonstrate actual prejudice by evidence of exclusion at the level of the venire actually chosen for him. Federal Record at 73-75; see Preston, 741 F.2d at 101; cf. Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). Because the harm is the exclusion itself, because harmless error analysis cannot be applied, and because a prima facie case is established by direct evidence of exclusion at the multiple-venire level, Preston had likely met his habeas burden of showing “prejudice.”

Although it is wholly unnecessary to demonstrate prejudice in Atwell’s case, prejudice was shown by direct evidence of systematic exclusion at the multiple-venire level. Such prejudice can only be negated by Governmental proof that no discrimination occurred.

Conclusion

Strauder and Thiel continue to provide constitutional safeguards against the specter of intentional, systematic exclusion of blacks from jury duty. Although such discrimination is today substantially less visible in the sepulchers of our collective judicial wisdom, the invidious practice has yet to rest firmly in its grave. It is inconceivable that the United States Constitution does not supply the nails for such discrimination’s coffin. Where systematic misapplication of these laws has thereby resulted in unconstitutional incarceration, the “great writ” of habeas corpus provides the *513hammer to strike the Constitutional blow. See Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023-25, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938).

Although granting of the petition for habeas corpus is a matter of discretion, see Ex parte Royall, 117 U.S. 241, 6 S.Ct. 734, 29 L.Ed. 868 (1886), failure to grant the motion based on erroneous conclusions of law is an abuse of that discretion. Cf. Eggleston v. Estelle, 513 F.2d 758, 760-61 (1975). Because defendant Atwell met his burden of proof in establishing a constitutional violation at his trial, and raised this claim at every opportunity on appeal, he is entitled to relief. Further, because the trial court relied upon harmless error analysis and refused to reach the Louisiana Supreme Court’s erroneous failure to apply Cage, I would accordingly reverse the decision of the District Court and remand the cause with instructions for the writ of habeas corpus to issue.6