State v. Crocker

982 P.2d 45, 160 Or. App. 445, 1999 Ore. App. LEXIS 818
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedMay 19, 1999
Docket96C20153; CA A97241
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 982 P.2d 45 (State v. Crocker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Crocker, 982 P.2d 45, 160 Or. App. 445, 1999 Ore. App. LEXIS 818 (Or. Ct. App. 1999).

Opinion

*447 EDMONDS, P. J.

Defendant appeals from two convictions for possession of a weapon by an inmate. ORS 166.275. On appeal, we affirm.

In October 1995, defendant committed the crimes underlying the convictions and the matters came to trial in February 1997. At trial, the prosecutor exercised his authority under subsection (1)(g) of Ballot Measure 40 and requested that the court exclude any prospective jurors who were not registered to vote or who had prior felony convictions. The trial court granted the prosecutor’s request, and, as a result, it appears that four individuals out of 29 prospective jurors were excluded from the panel from which the 12-person jury was selected. Several months after defendant’s trial, the 1997 Legislative Assembly enacted Senate Bill 936 which amended ORS 10.030 to conform to subsection (l)(g) of Ballot Measure 40. Or Laws 1997, ch 313, §§ 8, 9a and b. 1 Thereafter, Ballot Measure 40 was declared unconstitutional. Armatta v. Kitzhaber, 327 Or 250, 959 P2d 49 (1998).

Defendant argues (1) that Senate Bill 936 cannot be applied to him because the state did not assert its application at trial; 2 (2) that Senate Bill 936 is “merely the ‘implementing’ language for Ballot Measure 40” and that because Ballot Measure 40 was unconstitutional, so too is Senate Bill 936; *448 and (3) that “[i]f this court for some reason finds Senate Bill 936 applicable * * * because it is independent of Ballot Measure 40, defendant submits Senate Bill 936 is itself also unconstitutional.” In previous opinions in other cases, we have considered and rejected the same arguments that defendant makes regarding Senate Bill 936 3 except for the argument that the provisions of Senate Bill 936 limiting jury pools to registered voters and those persons not convicted of felonies are unconstitutional. Defendant argues that section 9b

“violate[s] a criminal defendant’s right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, under Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 US 522, 95 S Ct 692, 42 L Ed 2d 690 (1975); and that it is the state’s burden to prove that the change in jury composition does not systematically and intentionally exclude any group, under Holland v. Illinois, 493 US 474, 110 S Ct 803, 107 L Ed 2d 905 (1990) and Duren v. Missouri, 439 US 357, 99 S Ct 664, 58 L Ed 2d 579 (1979).”

The cases cited above by defendant are not particularly instructive to the analysis of the specific issues before us, except that they stand for the general proposition that, to be constitutional, any restrictions on jury service under the Sixth Amendment must result in a cross-section of the community from which the names are drawn. For instance, Taylor involved a Louisiana statute and a provision of the Louisiana Constitution that systematically excluded women from jury panels. Duren examined the constitutionality of a statute that granted women, upon their request, an automatic exemption from jury service. Holland involved a prosecutor’s peremptory challenge to exclude all potential jurors who were Airican-American from the petit jury for a white defendant. In Taylor and Duren, the court held that the statutes violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a fair cross-section of the pool from which juries are selected. In Holland, the court held that the defendant was not deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to a “fair possibility” of a representative jury because the amendment requires only the inclusion of all cognizable groups in the community in the venire.

*449 We turn first to the constitutionality of the requirement that the eligibility of persons to act as jurors in a criminal trial is conditioned on their registration as voters. ORS 10.215 requires the clerk of the court to prepare a master jury fist from several sources, including “the most recent list of electors of the county.” In State v. Anderson, 6 Or App 22, 485 P2d 446 (1971), cert den sub nom Atkison v. Oregon, 406 US 973 (1972), appeal dismissed sub nom Anderson v. Oregon, 410 US 920, 93 S Ct 1362, 35 L Ed 2d 582 (1973), the defendant contended that a jury pool chosen at random by a computer from a list of registered voters was not representative of a valid cross-section of the community. The defendant, an African-American, asserted that African-Americans comprised 3.8 percent of the inhabitants of the county, but only 2.35 percent of the 170 jurors that were in the jury pool. We held that in order to prevail, the defendant was required to prove a systematic exclusion of cognizable groups from the registered voter list and that the showing that the proportion of African-Americans in the jury panel was somewhat less than the proportion of the general population was insufficient in itself to satisfy the burden. We said:

“So long as the voter registration procedures are not discriminatory — and there is no such claim in this case either as to race, education or sex — random selection from such lists is a constitutionally valid manner of jury selection. Those who freely choose not to register to vote, whatever their race, sex or national background or for whatever reason they may have, are not a cognizable group subjected to systematic exclusion.” 6 Or App at 25-26.

Here, defendant does not contend that the voter registration procedures are discriminatory. The significance of our holding in Anderson to this case is that the requirement that jury pools be chosen from registered voter lists does not by itself offend the Sixth Amendment. We turn to the question of whether the fact that certain convicted felons and non-registered voters can be excluded from juries hearing criminal cases violates the Sixth Amendment.

In Carter v. Jury Commission, 396 US 320, 332-33, 90 S Ct 518, 24 L Ed 2d 549 (1970), the Supreme Court noted:

*450 “It has long been accepted that the Constitution does not forbid the States to prescribe relevant qualifications for their jurors. The States remain free to confine the selection to citizens, to persons meeting specified qualifications of age * * * and to those possessing good intelligence, sound judgment, and fair character. ‘Our duty to protect the federal constitutional rights of all does not mean we must or should impose on states our conception of the proper source of jury lists, so long as the source reasonably reflects a cross-section of the population suitable in character and intelligence for that civic duty.’ ” (quoting Brown v. Allen,

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

State v. Thiehoff
10 P.3d 322 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2000)
State v. Miles
982 P.2d 48 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1999)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
982 P.2d 45, 160 Or. App. 445, 1999 Ore. App. LEXIS 818, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-crocker-orctapp-1999.