Groppi v. Wisconsin/Opinion of the Court

On August 31, 1967, during a period of civil disturbances in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the appellant, a Romain Catholic priest, was arrested in that city on a charge of resisting arrest. Under Wisconsin law that offense is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $500 or imprisonment in the county jail for not more than one year, or both. After a series of continuances, the appellant was brought to trial before a jury in a Milwaukee County court on February 8, 1968. The first morning of the trial was occupied with qualifying the jurors, during the course of which t he appellant exhausted all of his peremptory challenges. The trial then proceeded, and at its conclusion the jury convicted the appellant as charged.

Prior to the trial, counsel for the appellant filed a motion for a change of venue from Milwaukee County 'to a county where community prejudice against this defendant does not exist and where an impartial jury trial can be had.' The motion asked the court to take judicial notice of 'the massive coverage by all news media in this community of the activities of this defendant,' or, in the alternative, that 'the defendant be permitted to offer proof of the nature and extent thereof, its effect upon this community and on the right of defendant to an impartial jury trial.' The trial judge denied the motion, making clear that his ruling was based exclusively on his view that Wisconsin law did not permit a change of venue in misdemeanor cases.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin affirmed the conviction. 41 Wis.2d 312, 164 N.W.2d 266. It held that the trial judge had been correct in his understanding that a Wisconsin statute foreclosed the possibility of a change of venue in a misdemeanor prosecution. It further held that this state law was constitutionally valid, pointing out that 'it would be extremely unusual for a community as a whole to prejudge the guilt of any person charged with a misdemeanor.' 41 Wis.2d, at 317, 164 N.W.2d, at 268. The court also noted that a defendant in a Wisconsin misdemeanor prosecution has a right to ask for continuances and to challenge prospective jurors on voir dire, and if 'these measures are still not sufficient to provide an impartial jury, the verdict can be set aside after trial based on the denial of a fair and impartial trial.' 41 Wis.2d, at 321, 164 N.W.2d, at 270. Two members of the court dissented, believing that the state statute did not absolutely forbid a change of venue in a misdemeanor prosecution, and that if the statute did contain such a prohibition it was constitutionally invalid. 41 Wis.2d, at 325, 164 N.W.2d, at 272.

This appeal followed, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 398 U.S. 957, 90 S.Ct. 2163, 26 L.Ed.2d 541. As the case reaches us we must, of course, accept the construction that the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has put upon the state statute. E.g., Kingsley International Pictures Corp. v. Regents of University, 360 U.S. 684, 688, 79 S.Ct. 1362, 1365, 3 L.Ed.2d 1512. The question before us, therefore, goes to the constitutionality of a state law that categorically prevents a change of venue for a criminal jury trial, regardless of the extent of local prejudice against the defendant, on the sole ground that the charge against him is labeled a misdemeanor. We hold that this question was answered correctly by the dissenting justices in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

The issue in this case is not whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to accord a jury trial to a defendant on a charge such as the appellant faced here. The issue concerns, rather, the nature of the jury trial that the Fourteenth Amendment commands, when trial by jury is what the State has purported to accord. We had occasion to consider this precise question almost 10 years ago in Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751. There we found that an Indiana conviction could not constitutionally stand because the jury had been infected by community prejudice before the trial had commenced. What the Court said in that case is wholly relevant here:

'In essence, the right to jury trial guarantees to the     criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial,      'indifferent' jurors. The failure to accord an accused a fair     hearing violates even the minimal standards of due process. In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 68 S.Ct. 499, 92 L.Ed. 682; Tumey     v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749. 'A fair     trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due      process.' In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136, 75 S.Ct. 623,     625, 99 L.Ed. 942. In the ultimate analysis, only the jury     can strip a man of his liberty or his life. In the language     of Lord Coke, a juror must be as 'indifferent as he stands      unsworne.' Co.Litt. 155b. His verdict must be based upon the     evidence developed at the trial. Cf. Thompson v. City of     Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 80 S.Ct. 624, 4 L.Ed.2d 654. This     is true, regardless of the heinousness of the crime charged,      the apparent guilt of the offender or the station in life      which he occupies. It was so written into our law as early as     1807 by Chief Justice Marshall in 1 Burr's Trial 416 *  *  * .'      366 U.S., at 722, 81 S.Ct., at 1642.

There are many ways to try to assure the kind of impartial jury that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. In Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600, the Court enumerated many of the procedures available, particularly in the context of a jury threatened by the poisonous influence of prejudicial publicity during the course of the trial itself. 384 U.S., at 357-363, 86 S.Ct., at 1519-1522. Here we are concerned with the methods available to assure an impartial jury in a situation where, because of prejudicial publicity or for some other reason, the community from which the jury is to be drawn may already by permeated with hostility toward the defendant. The problem is an ancient one. Mr. Justice Holmes stated no more than a commonplace when, two generations ago, he noted that '(a)ny judge who has sat with juries knows that, in spite of forms, they are extremely likely to be impregnated by the environing atmosphere.' Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 349, 35 S.Ct. 582, 595, 59 L.Ed. 969 (dissenting opinion).

One way to try to meet the problem is to grant a continuance of the trial in the hope that in the course of time the fires of prejudice will cool. But this hope may not be realized, and continuances, particularly if they are repeated, work against the important values implicit in the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial. Another way is to provide a method of jury qualification that will promote, through the exercise of challenges to the venire-preemptory and for cause-the exclusion of prospective jurors infected with the prejudice of the community from which they come. But this protection, as Irvin v. Dowd, supra, shows, is not always adequate to effectuate the constitutional guarantee.

On at least one occasion this Court has explicitly held that only a change of venue was constitutionally sufficient to assure the kind of impartial jury that is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. That was in the case of Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663. We held that 'it was a denial of due process of law to refuse the request for a change of venue, after the people of Calcasieu Parish had been exposed repeatedly and in depth' to the prejudicial pretrial publicity there involved. 373 U.S., at 726, 83 S.Ct., at 1419. Rideau was not decided until 1963, but its message echoes more than 200 years of human experience in the endless quest for the fair administration of criminal justice.

It is doubtless true, as the Supreme Court of Wisconsin said, that community prejudice is not often aroused against a man accused only of a misdemeanor. But under the Constitution a defendant must be given an opportunity to show that a change of venue is required in his case. The Wisconsin statute wholly denied that opportunity to the appellant.

Accordingly, the judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Vacated and remanded.

Mr. Justice BLACKMUN, whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins, concurring.

Although I agree in large part with the reasoning of Mr. Justice BLACK'S opinion in dissent, I nevertheless join in the Court's judgment that this conviction of Father Groppi must be vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings. In so doing, however, I feel compelled to make the following observations:

1. The primary issue, it seems to me, is whether the appellant (hereafter defendant) received a fair trial, not whether, as a matter of abstract constitutional law, he was entitled to a change of venue in a Wisconsin misdemeanor prosecution in 1968.

2. A fair trial, of course, in fundamental. No one disputes that. As the Court points out in footnote 12 of its opinion, this principle of English-American jurisprudence was evolved prior to the embodiment of the treasured concepts of an impartial jury in the Sixth Amendment and of due process in the Fifth and Fourteenth.

3. If the defense believes that a fair trial is unlikely because of community prejudice, that is a matter for proof by the defense, and, when proved, should constitutionally warrant, and indeed demand, a change of venue in any case, whether the prosecution be for a felony or for a misdemeanor.

4. Thus, I find myself in agreement with the two dissenting Justices of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin and with that court's Chief Justice, in concurring in the result of the majority opinion, when the three conclude, 41 Wis.2d 312, 324, 325, 164 N.W.2d 266, 272, that a change of venue in a misdemeanor case is constitutionally required upon a proper showing.

5. I am not a loss to understand how a change of venue statute expressed in positive but permissive terms and specifically applicable to felony cases can be construed to embody a negative prohibition for misdemeanor cases, particularly with regard to so fundamental a right as the right to have a trial untainted by community prejudice. The statutory interpretation so made is all the more unexpected because it raises an otherwise quite avoidable constitutional issue.

6. But the Wisconsin court has spoken and, by majority vote, has construed the state statute then in effect in that very way. Construction of the statute is the state court's task. It is not our task. And we are bound by the Wisconsin court's decision as to the meaning and application of a Wisconsin statute.

7. The record before us leaves much to be desired. It discloses no formal offer of proof of the kind customarily made. It contains no transcript of the voir dire, and thus there is no way in which we or anyone else can evaluate from the voir dire the presence, or the possibility of the presence, of actual prejudice in any member of the jury panel. Although a 'motion after verdict' was made and although it referred to 'the ground of community prejudice,' the motion does not in so many words assert that this defendant actually was denied a fair and impartial trial. Neither is the motion supported by affidavits incorporating the claimed prejudicial media reports.

8. The jury appears to have been selected expeditiously and without difficulty during a single morning. And we note what appears to be conflicting evidence in the record as to Father Groppi's behavior at the point of his arrest, evidence which would support a fair jury's conclusion either way, that is, that he did resist arrest or that he did not resist arrest, within the meaning and application of the Wisconsin statute. On balance, in the face of what may be regarded as a ruling by the trial court that no showing, however persuasive, of community prejudice and its effect upon the jury actually selected could command a change of venue in this misdemeanor case, I am content to join in the vacation of the judgment of conviction and in the remand in order to allow the defendant to attempt to make his proof.

9. I would stress, however, more than by the three-line final footnote which may be lost to the reader who is more interested in the notoriety of the case than in what we are doing today by way of specific ruling, that this remand does not necessarily mean a new trial for Father Groppi, and freedom from his conviction on the charge of resisting arrest. The defendant is to have his opportunity to demonstrate prejudice and the likelihood of an unfair trial. If he fails in that quest, or if he now refuses to undertake it, the judgment of conviction may be reinstated. If he does not fail, then of course the conviction falls and the State is remitted to its choice between a new trial or a dismissal of the charge.

10. Finally, I doubt very much whether this rather unimportant case, but an admittedly sensitive one because of the identity of the defendant and the means he has selected to make his protests known, at all approaches the circumstances and the offensive character of what this Court condemned in Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966), in Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963), and in Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961), cited in the Court's opinion. Nevertheless, unfairness anywhere, in shall cases as well as in large, is abhorred, is to be ferreted out, and is to be eliminated. Despite the unsatisfactory record, this defendant must have his opportunity to demonstrate what he alleges.

Mr. Justice BLACK, dissenting.