United States v. Charles Kazuyuki Fujimoto

105 F. Supp. 727, 1952 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4211
CourtDistrict Court, D. Hawaii
DecidedJune 12, 1952
DocketCr. 10495
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 105 F. Supp. 727 (United States v. Charles Kazuyuki Fujimoto) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Hawaii primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Charles Kazuyuki Fujimoto, 105 F. Supp. 727, 1952 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4211 (D. Haw. 1952).

Opinion

STEPHENS, Circuit Judge.

On the 29th day of August, 1951, all of the persons named as defendants in the caption hereto were indicted by the United States Grand Jury for the Judicial District of Hawaii for the violation of “Sec. 3. of the Smith Act”. 54 Stat. 671, 18 U.S.C. (1946 ed.) § 11, and 18 U.S.C. (1948 ed.) § 371.

Thereafter all of the defendants made a motion to dismiss the indictments on the ground that the grand jury was not validly selected. The basic ground alleged for the relief asked was that the method used in selecting the list from which members of the grand jury were chosen could not and did not result in a cross section of those persons in the District of Hawaii qualified to act as grand jurors but instead would and did result in the selection of many more members from the Caucasian group, many more members from the so-called upper economic or prosperous group including business managerial persons, than each of their group numbers entitled them to in any reasonable proportion, thereby resulting in an unreasonable under-proportion of members of other than the Caucasian race and of manual laborers and others in the less financially prosperous groups of citizenry of the Territory.

The defendants presented another motion to the same court to quash the trial jury panel drawn as prospective jurors to hear the trial.

Evidence both oral and written has been presented to the court upon both motions. I have had the benefit of able argument on behalf of both government and defendants and I have given careful attention to the very abundant statistical tables and their analysis by defendant-movant witnesses Dr. John E. Reinecke and Dr. Andrew W. Lind and by Masao Watanbe for the United States.

Much has been written upon the economic structure and the social compatibility of Hawaiians of every blood. There *729 are a few of us who dearly remember the period of the royal reigns of King Kalakaua (1874-1891) who was succeeded by his sister, Queen Liliuokalani (1891 — 1893) in ruling over the people and the territory of “The Paradise of the Pacific”. The government was picturesquely paternal. The native Hawaiian was and is gentle and peaceful; the climate was and is ideal and Nature in the early days furnished vegetable and sea food in abundance. Because of the great distances from other lands, fear of war-like invasion was non-existent. The Caucasian missionary and farmer was an early immigrant, and the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Porto Rican, Filipino, and other people came with the advent of large, dependable ships upon voyages of discovery, adventure, and desire for better lives. Workmen came to labor in the developing sugar and pineapple plantations, which were held by a very few interests. Only in recent years the plantation laborers have been organized into unions and adjustment of interests between plantation operators and plantation labor remains incomplete to this day. The fact is that there is not the benevolent fusing of all economic, social, and racial strata in the Islands as some surface observers have depicted. Democracy has been established under American sovereignty but it does not work frictionless. In this welter of divergent philosophic, religious, and racial characteristics and clashing economic interests, the American doctrine of individual rights and free enterprise can thrive only through the strict adherence to the safety datum posts of Anglo-American jurisprudence. No one of them is more important than the jury system, both grand and petit.

The Applicable General Law.

In Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 1946, 328 U.S. 217, 220, 66 S.Ct. 984, 985, 90 L.Ed. 1181, the Supreme Court of the United States said, “ * * * Recognition must be given to the fact that those eligible for jury service are to be found in every stratum of society. Jury competence is an individual rather than a group or class matter. That fact lies at the very heart of the jury system. * * *” In the same case the Supreme Court also said, 328 U.S. at page 220, 66 S.Ct. at page 985, “The American tradition of trial by jury, * * * necessarily contemplates an impartial jury drawn from a cross-section of the community. * * * ”

The government in the instant case very properly quoted from Dow v. Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp., D.C.W.D.Pa. 1951, 100 F.Supp. 494, 497: “For a jury panel to be invalid because of discrimination, there must be clear evidence of intent on part of the Jury Commissioner or Clerk, or both, to exclude, or to use a system of selection which is intended by them to result in exclusion of any person or group of persons from being called for jury service solely because of their economic status, occupation, race, sex, religion, social affiliation, or lack of it, political affiliation, or location of their homes geographically in the community. * * * ” 1

Proportional representation is not required, Fay v. People of State of New York, 1947, 332 U.S. 261, 291, 67 S.Ct. 1613, 91 L.Ed. 2043; Local 36 of International Fishermen & Allied Workers of America etc. v. United States, 9 Cir., 1949, 177 F.2d 320; and the burden is on the attacker of jury legality; and the Jury Commissioners are presumed to have discharged their duties properly. Glasser v. United States, 1942, 315 U.S. 60, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680.

The Local Law.

The Organic Act of the Territory of Hawaii, 48 U.S.C.A. § 491 et seq., provides in § 635 that “ * * * all juries shall be constituted without reference to the race or place of nativity of the jurors; but no person who is not a male citizen of the United States and twenty-one years of age and who can not understandingly speak, read, and write the English language shall *730 be a qualified juror or grand juror in the Territory of Hawaii. * * *” 2

Section 9791, Ch. 195, Rev.Laws of Hawaii, 1945, provides the following qualifications of a juror: He must be “ * * * a male citizen * * * of the age of twenty-one years or over; possesses the qualifications for registration as a voter; * * * in possession of his natural faculties and not decrepit; * * * intelligent, and of good character; and * * * can understandingly speak, read and write the English language; and * * * selected, summoned, returned and sworn without reference to race, or place of nativity.”

Section 9792 of the same laws provides that no person is qualified to act as a juror “ * * * who has been convicted of any felony or of a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude.”

Happily, both parties to the point at issue here have affirmatively asserted that it was the intention of each jury commissioner to assemble an impartial and legal list of prospective jurymen. Defendants’ main efforts have been to show by the result obtained, that the method used could not and did not produce a legal list for the jury box. Happily, too, all counsel have cooperated perfectly to arrive at the truth with as little delay as possible.

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Bluebook (online)
105 F. Supp. 727, 1952 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4211, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-charles-kazuyuki-fujimoto-hid-1952.