United States v. Biaggi

680 F. Supp. 641, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1439, 1988 WL 16119
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedFebruary 29, 1988
Docket87 Cr. 265 (CBM)
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 680 F. Supp. 641 (United States v. Biaggi) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Biaggi, 680 F. Supp. 641, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1439, 1988 WL 16119 (S.D.N.Y. 1988).

Opinion

OPINION

MOTLEY, District Judge.

On September 4, 1987, defendant John Mariotta, an Hispanic, moved this court for an order granting him access to the records used for the selection of grand and petit juries in the Southern District of New York. In support of this motion, Mariotta submitted an affidavit from a professional demographer whose analysis of voter registration data showed that the percentage of *643 the population registered to vote in primarily black and Hispanic voting districts is smaller than that in districts composed primarily of whites. The expert suggested that the Southern District’s reliance upon voter registration lists as the exclusive source of prospective jurors would result in underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in the jury pool. Mariotta argued that a review of the requested records would confirm this suspicion and thereby prove that he had been indicted in violation of the United States Constitution and the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 (Jury Act), 28 U.S.C. § 1861 et seg. (1982). The Government agreed that Mariotta’s request to inspect the records should be permitted. On November 9, 1987, this court granted Mariotta’s discovery motion.

Having analysed the data contained in the jury selection records, Mariotta now moves the court to dismiss the indictment in this case. He argues that the statistics show that the grand jury that indicted him was in fact chosen pursuant to a system that violates his rights pursuant to the Jury Act and the fifth, sixth, and fourteenth amendments. The other defendants in the case join his motion.

The Government opposes this motion. The Government’s experts criticize Mariotta’s statistical analysis of the data culled from the records of juror selection. They suggest that the analysis cannot be relied upon to show that either blacks or Hispanics are significantly underrepresented on jury venires in the Southern District of New York. The Government also contends that even if the statistics Mariotta has compiled are accepted as valid as a matter of fact, they are inadequate as a matter of law to prove any of his claims.

The court conducted an evidentiary hearing on the motion on January 28 and 29, 1988. 1 At the close of defendant’s case, the Government moved to dismiss the motion for failure to establish a prima facie claim. The court reserved judgment on this motion and directed the Government to present its evidence in rebuttal. Having carefully reviewed both the facts and the law pertaining to the disputed issues, the court now grants the Government’s motion with respect to all claims. 2

I. THE STATISTICAL EVIDENCE

Mariotta’s objection to the Southern District's Jury Plan is narrowly confined to a challenge to the court’s reliance exclusively on voter registration lists as the source of prospective jurors. Ideally, the court would decide his motion first by examining data that showed the actual percentage of the relevant groups who have registered to vote over a period of time in the area served by the Manhattan courthouse and then by determining whether any disparities among those percentages were legally significant. Such statistics are apparently unavailable, however, because county election boards do not require persons registering to vote to identify themselves by race or ethnicity. See Tr. 72, 103. Consequently, the court must rely upon the more indirect methods used by defendant to discern the racial and ethnic composition of the jury pool in question. Familiarity with the following aspects of the Amended Plan for the Random Selection of Grand and Petit Jurors in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Jury Plan) is essential to understanding these methods.

Under the current Jury Plan, the Jury Clerk first obtains voter registration lists of the eight counties constituting the Southern District. The names on these lists are then immediately distributed — according to a formula of no present importance — into two Master Jury Wheels, one for the Manhattan courthouse and one for *644 the White Plains courthouse. The Master Jury Wheels are “emptied” and “refilled” after every presidential election. The instant motion is based on alleged underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics on the Master Jury Wheel of the Manhattan courthouse only. The remaining description of relevant jury selection procedures therefore refers to those followed in Manhattan.

The Jury Clerk initially places in the Master Jury Wheel the number of names sufficient to supply the court’s estimated juror requirements for four years. The Clerk then estimates the number of persons to whom Juror Qualification Questionnaires must be sent to obtain an adequate supply of qualified jurors for service over the next six months. The number of names in the Master Jury Wheel is divided by the number of persons to whom questionnaires will be sent to obtain a “quotient.” For example, if there were 100,000 names in the Master Jury Wheel and the Clerk determined that 1,000 persons should receive questionnaires, then the quotient would be 100. The Clerk would then send a questionnaire to every 100th person on the Master Jury Wheel, starting with a randomly selected “starting number.” The group of people selected in this fashion is denominated a “reel.” This process is repeated approximately every six months as the Jury Clerk deems necessary, selecting each subsequent reel from the progressively diminishing list of names on the Master Jury Wheel.

The questionnaire sent to each person on a reel requests information regarding, among other things, the prospective juror’s race and whether he or she is Hispanic. The prospective juror is directed to return the questionnaire to the District Court in an envelope provided by the court. The Jury Clerk keeps the returned questionnaires for further reference.

A. Mariotta’s Analysis

George Leyland, the expert statistician and demographer who testified for the defense, employed three random sampling techniques to estimate the relevant racial and ethnic composition of the 1984 Manhattan Master Jury Wheel. He first analyzed the third and fourth reels of the 1984 Master Jury Wheel by having Mariotta’s counsel select every fifth juror questionnaire from the batches of returned questionnaires maintained by the Jury Clerk. Mariotta’s counsel recorded the relevant racial and ethnic characteristics of the 5,784 selected prospective jurors who had provided the necessary information. Leyland then compared the percentage of prospective jurors who had identified themselves as black or Hispanic on the questionnaires with the percentage of citizens at least eighteen years of age who so identified themselves in the 1980 Census. 3 He determined that the likelihood that the disparities he found between these percentages could occur by chance is less than one in one trillion. See Defendant’s Exh. 2(E), (F).

To confirm these findings, Leyland analysed a second sample from the third and fourth reels of the 1984 Master Jury Wheel.

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

Related

United States v. Barlow
732 F. Supp. 2d 1 (E.D. New York, 2010)
United States v. Green
389 F. Supp. 2d 29 (D. Massachusetts, 2005)
United States v. Haworth
948 F. Supp. 981 (D. New Mexico, 1996)
United States v. Purdy
946 F. Supp. 1094 (D. Connecticut, 1996)
United States v. Reyes
934 F. Supp. 553 (S.D. New York, 1996)
United States v. Rioux
930 F. Supp. 1558 (D. Connecticut, 1995)
United States v. Gary W. Jackman
46 F.3d 1240 (Second Circuit, 1995)
United States v. Garces
849 F. Supp. 852 (E.D. New York, 1994)
United States v. Osorio
801 F. Supp. 966 (D. Connecticut, 1992)
Veliz v. Crown Lift Trucks
714 F. Supp. 49 (E.D. New York, 1989)
United States v. Yonkers Contracting Co.
684 F. Supp. 386 (S.D. New York, 1988)
United States v. Yonkers Contracting Co., Inc.
682 F. Supp. 757 (S.D. New York, 1988)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
680 F. Supp. 641, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1439, 1988 WL 16119, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-biaggi-nysd-1988.