United States v. Local 36 of International Fishermen & Allied Workers

70 F. Supp. 782
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. California
DecidedMarch 12, 1947
Docket18842
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 70 F. Supp. 782 (United States v. Local 36 of International Fishermen & Allied Workers) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Local 36 of International Fishermen & Allied Workers, 70 F. Supp. 782 (S.D. Cal. 1947).

Opinion

HALL, District Judge.

The defendants’ motion to dismiss the indictment and their challenge and motion to strike out the entire trial jury panel are both based upon the same grounds. In view of the fact that the February 1946 grand jury which returned the indictment and the current trial jury panel were chosen from the names selected in the same method and manner by the jury commissioner and the clerk, the stipulation that the two motions might be heard together was approved.

Briefly stated, the contention is that the grand jury for the February 1946 term and the present trial jury panel were drawn in such manner that the grand jury was “not an impartial grand jury” and that the trial jury panel was not “an impartial jury panel drawn from a cross-section of the community, but that certain defined groups of the community, to wit: laborers, people working by the day or hour, members of labor unions and Negroes were systematically and intentionally discriminated against, and were excluded from the list of persons to .serve” as grand jurors and trial jurors. It is further asserted that they were deprived of their right to an impartial grand jury and an impartial trial jury “without such exclusion and discrimination as against groups and classes of persons to which defendants belong.”

While it might appear from the wording of the motion and the affidavit of one of the counsel filed in support of the motion that there was a willful and deliberate intent on the part of the clerk and the jury commissioner to effect such an alleged discrimination, it should be stated at this point that after the conclusion of the evidence and during the course of the argument Mr. Margolis, of defendants’ counsel, stated that the defendants did not want anything in the argument or in the presentation of the evidence to indicate that they intended to impugn the motives or the desires of either Mr. Brown, the commissioner, or Mr. Smith, the clerk, and that there is nothing in the record which shows anything from the standpoint of personal motivation of either of them.'

Be it also said that counsel for the defendants, in support of their motion, instead of limiting their tactics to merely an attack upon the methods used, have very commendably sought to produce by evidence and in argument suggestions which were calculated to aid the officials of this court charged with the very difficult task of selecting jurors, to find a better way than the one under assault.

It should also be stated that this is not a usual proceeding. So far as I can ascertain from the records of this court, of which I take judicial notice, only twice before has a challenge recently on somewhat the same grounds been made, once in 1924 and once in 1939. From the records it appears *784 that upon each of these occasions the motions were denied and no appeal taken. Such proceedings were, however, before the series of cases recently promulgated by the Supreme Court beginning with the case of Smith v. Texas, 1940, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84; Glasser v. United States, 1942, 315 U.S. 60, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L. Ed. 680; Hill v. Texas, 1942, 316 U.S. 400, 62 S.Ct. 1159, 86 L.Ed. 1559, and its companion case Akins v. Texas, 1945, 325 U.S. 398, 65 S.Ct. 1276, 89 L.Ed, 1692, and culminating with Thiel v. Southern Pacific, 1946, 328 U.S. 217, 66 S.Ct. 984 and Ballard v. United States, 1946, 329 U.S. 187, 67 S. Ct. 261, 91 L.Ed.-.

The defendants contend that it is the rationale of those cases, not only that the deliberate and intentional exclusion by a clerk or the jury commissioner of persons having common characteristics by virtue of their employment, or their method or time or rate of pay, or religion, race, politics, geographic location, or associations in social intercourse, is unlawful, but also that the use of a method or system of selection which, without intention so to do on the part of either of those officers, results in the exclusion of any such group having common characteristics is likewise unlawful.

They further contend that the use of any method, process or system of selection which results in the over-weighting, by a larger percentage of one occupation than another among the actual jurors selected, of persons from one group or “class” is likewise unlawful. The latter contention is more clear if it is stated specifically. It is, that an “economic class” (arbitrarily designated by the defendants as proprietors, managers and officials) constitute more than 50 per cent of the grand jury and the trial jury panel under attack, whereas this so-called “economic class” actually constitutes but approximately 15 per cent of the population.

Any discussion of this problem necessarily begins with the Thiel case, supra, which has been much discussed not only among the members of the bar but it is a matter of particular interest to the trial judge. In this connection, reference is made to the address by the Hon. Louis E. Goodman, United States District Judge, to the September 1946 Conference of Judges of the Ninth Circuit (6 F.R.D. 253), and to Judge Harris’ opinion in the Thiel case on its remand (67 F.Supp. 934).

The difficulty in this proceeding has been to interpret and apply the statements, conclusions and apparent holdings of the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in the Thiel case to the practical realities with which the lower courts are confronted in the actual trial of lawsuits.

It is arguable that the majority opinion in the Thiel case [328 U.S. 217, 66 S. Ct. 987], in addition to deciding specifically that the act of the clerk and the jury commissioner was unlawful in “intentionally and systematically” excluding men who were paid by the day, also established several other very broad and far-reaching propositions, which may be generally stated as follows:

1. That people who are paid at different times, that is, by the day, or hour, or week or month, or by the piece or otherwise, are in different “economic classes” than those paid differently, regardless of the similarity of their work, personality, background, experience, education, sex, race, religion, politics or other common characteristics. 1

2. That women must be regarded as being in a separate economic “class” from, their husbands, regardless of work, personality, background, experience, education, race, religion, politics or other common characteristics. 2

3. That persons of the opposite sex, and persons who are in one ■ “economic class,” as a matter of law, without regard *785 to the facts concerning an actual state of mind, are to be regarded as being incapable of being “impartial” to a litigant who is not of the same sex or in the same economic group or class, regardless of similarity of work, background, experience, personality, education, race, religion, politics or other common characteristics. 3

4.

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Bluebook (online)
70 F. Supp. 782, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-local-36-of-international-fishermen-allied-workers-casd-1947.