Carter v. Jury Commission of Greene County/Opinion of the Court

The appellants, Negro citizens of Greene County, Alabama, commenced this class action against officials charged with the administration of the State's juryselection laws: the county jury commissioners and their clerk, the local circuit court judge, and the Governor of Alabama. The complaint alleged that the appellants were fully qualified to serve as jurors and desired to serve, but had never been summoned for jury service. It charged that the appellees had effected a discriminatory exclusion of Negroes from grand and petit juries in Greene County-the Governor in his selection of the county jury commission, and the commissioners and judge in their arbitrary exclusion of Negroes. The complaint sought (1) a declaration that qualified Negroes were systematically excluded from Greene County grand and petit juries, that the Alabama statutes governing jury selection were unconstitutional on their face and as applied, and that the jury commission was a deliberately segregated governmental agency; (2) a permanent injunction forbidding the systematic exclusion of Negroes from Greene County juries pursuant to the challenged statutes and requiring that all eligible Negroes be placed on the jury roll; and (3) an order vacating the appointments of the jury commissioners and compelling the Governor to select new members without racial discrimination.

Alabama's jury-selection procedure is governed by statute. Ala. Code, Tit. 30, § 1 et seq. (1958 and Supp. 1967). The Governor appoints a three-member jury commission for each county. §§ 8-10. The commission employs a clerk, § 15, who is charged with the duty of obtaining the name of every citizen of the county over 21 and under 65 years of age, together with his occupation and places of residence and business. § 18. The clerk must 'scan the registration lists, the lists returned to the tax assessor, any city directories, telephone directories and any and every other source of information from which he may obtain information * *  * .' § 24. He must also 'visit every precinct at least once a year to enable the jury commission to properly perform the duties required of it * *  * .' Ibid. Once the clerk submits his list of names, the commission is under a duty to prepare a jury roll and jury box containing the names of all qualified, nonexempt citizens in the county, §§ 20, 24, who are 'generally reputed to be honest and intelligent and are esteemed in the community for their integrity, good character and sound judgment * *  * .' § 21.

A three-judge District Court, convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281 and 2284, conducted an extensive evidentiary hearing on the appellants' complaint. The record fully supports the trial court's conclusion, set out in its detailed opinion, that the jury-selection process as it actually operated in Greene County at the outset of this litigation departed from the statutory mandate in several respects:

'The clerk does not obtain the names of all potentially eligible jurors as provided by § 18, in fact was not aware that the statute directed that this be done and knew of no way in which she could do it. The starting point each year is last year's roll. Everyone thereon is considered to be qualified and remains on the roll unless he dies or moves away (or, presumably, is convicted of a felony). New names are added to the old roll. Almost all of the work of the commission is devoted to securing names of persons suggested for consideration as new jurors. The clerk performs some duties directed toward securing such names. This is a part-time task, done without compensation, in spare time available from performance of her duties as clerk of the Circuit Court. She uses voter lists but not the tax assessor's lists. Telephone directories for some of the communities are referred to, city directories not at all since Greene County is largely rural.

'The clerk goes into each of the eleven beats or precincts annually, usually one time. Her trips out into the county for this purpose never consume a full day. At various places in the county she talks with persons she knows and secures suggested names. She is acquainted with a good many Negroes, but very few 'out in the county.' She does not know the reputation of most of the Negroes in the county. Because of her duties as clerk of the Circuit Court the names and reputations of Negroes most familiar to her are those who have been convicted of crime or have been 'in trouble.' She does not know any Negro ministers, does not seek names from any Negro or white churches or fraternal organizations. She obtains some names from the county's Negro deputy sheriff.

'The commission members also secure some names, but on a basis no more regular or formalized than the efforts of the clerk. The commissioners 'ask around,' each usually in the area of the county where he resides, and secure a few names, chiefly from white persons. Some of the names are obtained from public officials, substantially all of whom are white.

'One commissioner testified that he asked for names and that if people didn't give him names he could not submit them. He accepts pay for one day's work each year, stating that he does not have a lot of time to put on jury commission work. * *  * He takes the word of those who recommend people, checks no further and sees no need to check further, considering that he is to rely on the judgment of others. He makes no inquiry or determination whether persons suggested can read or write * *  *. Neither commissioners nor clerk have any social contacts with Negroes or belong to any of the same organizations.

'Through its yearly meeting in August, 1966, the jury commission met once each year usually for one day, sometimes for two, to prepare a new roll. New names presented by clerk and commissioners, and some sent in by letter, were considered. The clerk checked them against court records of felony convictions. New names decided upon as acceptable were added to the old roll. The names of those on the old roll who had died or moved away were removed.

'At the August, 1966 meeting one commissioner was new and submitted no names, white or Negro, and merely did clerical work at the meeting. Another had been ill and able to seek names little if at all. The third could remember one Negro name that he suggested. This commissioner brought the name, or names, he proposed on a trade bill he had received, and after so using it threw it away. All lists of suggested names were destroyed. As a result of that meeting the number of Negro names on the jury roll increased by 37. * *  * Approximately 32 of those names came from lists given the clerk or commissioners by others. The testimony is that at the one-day August meeting the entire voter list was scanned. It contained the names of around 2,000 Negroes.

'Thus in practice, through the August, 1966 meeting the system operated exactly in reverse from what the state statutes contemplate. It produced a small group of individually selected or recommended names for consideration. Those potentially qualified but whose names were never focused upon were given no consideration. Those who prepared the roll and administered the system were white and with limited means of contact with the Negro community. Though they recognized that the most pertinent information as to which Negoes do, and which do not, meet the statutory qualifications comes from Negroes there was no meaningful procedure by which Negro names were fed into the machinery for consideration or effectual means of communication by which the knowledge possessed by the Negro community was utilized. In practice most of the work of the commission has been devoted to the function of securing names to be considered. Once a name has come up for consideration it usually has been added to the rolls unless that person has been convicted of a felony. The function of applying the statutory criteria has been carried out only in part, or by accepting as conclusive the judgment of others, and for some criteria not at all.'

The District Court's further findings demonstrated the impact of the selection process on the racial composition of Greene County juries. According to the 1960 census, Negroes composed threefourths of the county's population. Yet from 1961 to 1963 the largest number of Negroes ever to appear on the jury list was about 7% of the total. The court noted that in 1964 a single-judge federal district court had entered a declaratory judgment setting forth the duties of the jury commissioners and their clerk under Alabama law, instructing them not to pursue a course of conduct operating to discriminate against Negroes, forbidding them to employ numerical or proportional limitations with respect to race, and directing an examination of the jury roll for compliance with the judgment. Thereafter, the situation had improved only marginally. In 1966 only 82 Negroes appeared among the 471 citizens listed on the jury roll; 50% of the white male population of the county found its way to the jury roll in that year, but only 4% of the Negro. In 1967, following a statutory amendment, the commission added women to the jury roll. Upon the expansion of the list, Negroes composed 388 of the 1,198 potential jurors-still only 32% of the total, even though the 1967 population of the county was estimated to be about 65% Negro.

The District Court found that 'there is invalid exclusion of Negroes on a racially discriminatory basis.' It enjoined the jury commissioners and their clerk from systematically excluding Negroes from the jury roll, and directed them 'to take prompt action to compile a jury list * *  * in accordance with the laws of Alabama and *  *  * constitutional principles'; to file a jury list so compiled within 60 days, showing the information required by Alabama law for each potential juror, together with his race and, if available, his age; and to submit a report setting forth the procedure by which the commission had compiled the list and applied the statutory qualifications and exclusions.

The court declined, however, either to enjoin the enforcement of the challenged Alabama statutory provisions or to direct the Governor to appoint Negroes to the jury commission. From these rulings the appellants took a direct appeal to this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1253. We noted probable jurisdiction. 393 U.S. 1115, 89 S.Ct. 990, 22 L.Ed.2d 120.

* This is the first case to reach the Court in which an attack upon alleged racial discrimination in choosing juries has been made by plaintiffs seeking affirmative relief, rather than by defendants challenging judgments of criminal conviction on the ground of systematic exclusion of Negroes from the grand juries that indicted them, the trial juries that found them guilty, or both. The District Court found no barrier to such a suit, and neither do we. Defendants in criminal proceedings do not have the only cognizable legal interest in nondiscriminatory jury selection. People excluded from juries because of their race are as much aggrieved as those indicted and tried by juries chosen under a system of racial exclusion. Surely there is no jurisdictional or procedural bar to an attack upon systematic jury discrimination by way of a civil suit such as the one brought here. The federal claim is bottomed on the simple proposition that the State, acting through its agents, has refused to consider the appellants for jury service solely because of their race. Whether jury service be deemed a right, a privilege, or a duty, the State may no more extend it to some of its citizens and deny it to others on racial grounds than it may invidiously discriminate in the offering and withholding of the elective franchise. Once the State chooses to provide grand and petit juries, whether or not constitutionally required to do so, it must hew to federal constitutional criteria in ensuring that the selection of membership is free of racial bias. The exclusion of Negroes from jury service because of their race is 'practically a brand upon them * *  *, an assertion of their inferiority *  *  * .' That kind of discrimination contravenes the very idea of a jury-'a body truly representative of the community,' composed of 'the peers or equals of the person whose rights it is selected or summoned to determine; that is, of his neighbors, fellows, associates, persons having the same legal status in society as that which he holds.'

On the merits, the appellants argue that the District Court erred in refusing to invalidate the Alabama statute requiring the jury commissioners to select for jury service those persons who are 'generally reputed to be honest and intelligent and * *  * esteemed in the community for their integrity, good character and sound judgment *  *  * .' Ala.Code, Tit. 30, § 21 (Supp.1967). The appellants say § 21 is unconstitutional on its face because, by leaving Alabama's jury officials at large in their selection of potential jurors, it provides them an opportunity to discriminate on the basis of race-an opportunity of which they have in fact taken advantage. Specifically, the charge is that § 21 leaves the commissioners free to give effect to their belief that Negroes are generally inferior to white people and so less likely to measure up to the statutory requirements; to the commissioners' fear that white people in the community will suffer if Negroes are accorded the opportunity to exercise the power of their majority; and to the commissioners' preference for Negroes who tend not to assert their right to legal and social equality. The appellants say the injunctive relief granted by the District Court is inadequate, because the history of jury selection in Greene County demonstrates a practice of discrimination persisting despite the federal court's prior grant of declaratory relief. Moreover, so long as § 21 remains the law, it is argued, Negro Citizens throughout Alabama will be obliged to attack the jury-selection process on a county-by-county basis, thereby imposing a heavy burden on already congested court dockets and delaying the day that Alabama will be free of discriminatory jury selection.

While there is force in what the appellants say, we cannot agree that s 21 is irredeemably invalid on its face. 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 educational attainment, 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 crosssection of the population suitable in character and intelligence for that civic duty.'

Statutory provisions such as those found in § 21 are not peculiar to Alabama, or to any particular region of the country. Nearly every State requires that its jurors be citizens of the United States, residents of the locality, of a specified minimum age, and able to understand English. Many of the States require that jurors be of 'good character' or the like; some, that they be 'intelligent' or 'well informed.'

Provisions of similar breadth have been challenged here and sustained before. In Franklin v. South Carolina, the Court rejected a similar attack upon a jury-selection statute alleged by the plaintiff in error to have conferred arbitrary power upon the jury commissioners. The pertinent law there provided that the commissioners should 'prepare a list of such qualified electors under the provisions of the Constitution, between the ages of twenty-one and sixty-five years, and of good moral character, of their respective counties as they may deem otherwise well qualified to serve as jurors, being persons of sound judgment and free from all legal exceptions, which list shall include not less than one from every three of such qualified electors * *  * .' In upholding the validity of these standards, the Court said:

'We do not think there is anything in this provision of the     statute having the effect to deny rights secured by the      Federal Constitution. * *  * There is nothing in this statute      which discriminates against individuals on account of race or      color or previous condition, or which subjects such persons      to any other or different treatment than other electors who      may be qualified to serve as jurors. The statute simply     provides for an exercise of judgment in attempting to secure      competent jurors of proper qualifications.'

Again, in Smith v. Texas, we dealt with a statute leaving a wide range of choice to the commissioners. Yet we expressly upheld the validity of the law. The statutory scheme was not in itself unfair; it was 'capable of being carried out with no racial discrimination whatsoever.'

No less can be said of the statutory standards attacked in the present case. Despite the overwhelming proof the appellants have adduced in support of their claim that the jury clerk and commissioners have abused the discretion that Alabama law confers on them in the preparation of the jury roll, we cannot say that § 21 is necessarily and under all circumstances invalid. The provision is devoid of any mention of race. Its antecedents are of ancient vintage, and there is no suggestion that the law was originally adopted or subsequently carried forward for the purpose of fostering racial discrimination. The federal courts are not incompetent to fashion detailed and stringent injunctive relief that will remedy any discriminatory application of the statute at the hands of the officials empowered to administer it. In sum, we cannot conclude, even on so compelling a record as that before us, that the guarantees of the Constitution can be secured only by the total invalidation of the challenged provisions of § 21.

The appellants also attack the composition of the Greene County jury commission. They urge that the record demonstrates the causal relation between the conceded absence of Negroes from the commission for at least the past decade and the systematic racial discrimination in the selection of potential jurors established before the District Court. It is argued that even the best-intentioned white jury commissioners are unlikely to know many Negroes who satisfy the statutory qualifications and that white jury officials in Alabama generally regard Negroes as incapable of satisfying the prerequisites for jury membership. Having shown a course of continuing and consistent disregard of statutory and constitutional standards on the part of the Greene County jury commissioners and the clerk, the appellants contend that if the discretionary provisions of § 21 are to remain the law, it is essential that the jury commission be representative of the community in which it functions, particularly in an area such as Greene County, where Negroes constitute a majority of the population. The District Court erred, the appellants say, in not ordering the Governor of Alabama to appoint Negroes to the Greene County jury commission.

The claim was not presented to the District Court in precisely these terms. There the appellants did not urge that white commissioners could not perform their statutory task in an unbiased manner in a predominantly Negro county. Rather, they contended that the Governor of Alabama had deliberately appointed a segregated jury commission in exercising the discretion conferred upon him by statute. The argument, in short, went to the alleged racial discrimination in the appointment of the commission, not to the biases inherent in a commission composed entirely of white people, without regard to claimed discriminatory selection by the Governor.

For present purposes we may assume that the State may no more exclude Negroes from service on the jury commission because of their race than from the juries themselves. But the District Court found the appellants had shown only that for many years the jury commission had been composed entirely of white men, and concluded that without more the appellants' attack failed for want of proof. We think that ruling was correct. Quite apart from the problems that would be involved in a federal court's ordering the Governor of a State to exercise his discretion in a particular way, we cannot say on this record that the absence of Negroes from the Greene County jury commission amounted in itself to a prima facie showing of discriminatory exclusion. The testimony before the District Court indicated that the Governor had appointed no Negroes to the Greene County commission during the 12 years preceding the commencement of suit. But the appellants' trial counsel conceded that he could not prove his charge of discriminatory selection without the testimony of the Governor. Whether or not such a concession was necessary, the statement may well have led counsel for the appellees to conclude that they were not obliged to produce witnesses on the State's behalf with respect to this phase of the appellants' case.

Nor can we uphold the appellants' present contention that, apart from the question of discrimination in the composition of the jury commission, the absence of Negroes from the commission compelled the District Court to order the appointment of Negro commissioners. The appellants are no more entitled to proportional representation by race on the jury commission than on any particular grand or petit jury.

There remains the question of the propriety of the relief afforded the appellants by the District Court. The court, as we have noted, enjoined the jury clerk and commissioners from systematically excluding Negroes from the Greene County jury roll, and directed them 'to take prompt action to compile a jury list * *  * in accordance with the laws of Alabama and *  *  * constitutional principles. * *  * ' Pursuant to the court's order, the commission submitted a new jury roll, dated November 6, 1968. The clerk stated she had been into each of the precincts of Greene County and had contacted people of both races by personal visit, letter, or telephone; with their recommendations and with the help of the voting list and telephone directory, the commission compiled a new jury roll. Whether this roll complies with the terms of the District Court's decree is a matter for that court to consider in the first instance. The court properly recognized that other and further relief might be appropriate. For that court 'has not merely the power but the duty to render a decree which will so far as possible eliminate the discriminatory effects of the past as well as bar like discrimination in the future.'

Accordingly, the judgment below is of the appellants to seek modification of the District Court's decree as circumstances may require.

It is so ordered.