Joseph Boston v. Michael Bowersox, Superintendent Jeremiah (Jay) Nixon, Attorney General, State of Missouri

202 F.3d 1001, 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 349

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
• Decided: January 11, 2000
• Docket: 98-2122
• Status: Published

Opinions

PER CURIAM.

Joseph Boston, a Missouri prisoner, appeals the district court’s order denying Boston’s petition for writ of habeas corpus. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (1996). We affirm.

On appeal, Boston contends his criminal trial was constitutionally flawed because the jury panel selected for his case did not represent a fair cross-section of the community. In denying Boston’s § 2254 petition, the district court stated:

The Missouri Court of Appeals rejected [Boston’s fair cross-section claim because]: “The selection of jurors here, although irregular and not strictly by statute, did not destroy the randomness of the selection procedure. The procedure used substantially complied with the statute, and the jury that served was [a] fair cross-section.” [State v. Boston, 910 S.W.2d 306, 313 (1995) ].

The state court’s resolution of [Boston’s] claims regarding jury composition was not based upon “an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence” or a misapplication of “clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) and (2).

Having considered the record, the briefs, and the parties’ arguments, we agree that the jury selection process was a random one because, as Bowersox states in his brief, “the jury’s supervisores decision to] sen[d] the first forty-five members of the ‘qualified jury list’ to arrive at the courthouse to [the trial judge’s courtroom for jury selection in Boston’s case] ... was not race-based or gender-based; instead, it was numerical ... and there was certainly no systematic exclusion.” See Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979) (to establish violation of fair cross-section requirement, petitioner must show distinctive group in community was systematically excluded in jury selection process).

We thus affirm the district court’s denial of Boston’s petition for writ of habeas corpus. See 8th Cir.R. 47B.