U.S. v. CARMICHAEL, 2009 WL 539953 (11th Cir. March 5, 2009)
The defendant was indicted for conspiracy to distribute over 3,000 kilograms of marijuana and with conspiracy to launder the proceeds. In this appeal the defendant challenged the venire summoned to hear his case under the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 (JSSA) 28 U.S.C. § 1861 et seq. and the Sixth Amendment. The issue arose from a previous problem in the selection process in which jurors who chose to defer jury service are placed back in the summons pool, making the total pool of summoned jurors disproportionately white. (Jurors who deferred are two to one white.) A new system was devised to erase the disproportion, but apparently a new jury administrator accidentally violated the new system, creating a disproportion for the pool from which the defendant’s trial was drawn. The court found no violation of the JSSA. As for the Sixth Amendment claim, a prima facie violation of the fair cross section requirement requires the defendant to show: (1) the group alleged to be excluded is a distinct group in the community, (2) 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. Because the defendant could not show a lack of fair and reasonable representation, his claim was denied.
