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Vicinage, Venue, and Community Cross-Section: Obstacles to a State Defendant's Right to a Trial by a Representative Jury Lisa E Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Volume 19 Article 9 Number 1 Fall 1991 1-1-1991 Vicinage, Venue, and Community Cross-Section: Obstacles to a State Defendant's Right to a Trial by a Representative Jury Lisa E. Alexander Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly Part of the Constitutional Law Commons Recommended Citation Lisa E. Alexander, Vicinage, Venue, and Community Cross-Section: Obstacles to a State Defendant's Right to a Trial by a Representative Jury, 19 Hastings Const. L.Q. 261 (1991). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly/vol19/iss1/9 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Vicinage, Venue, and Community Cross- Section: Obstacles to a State Defendant's Right to a Trial by a Representative Jury By LISA E. ALEXANDER* Introduction "The jury's legitimacy has always rested in its capacity to express fairly the community's conscience .... I One of the criminal jury's critical functions is to act as a buffer between government and defend- ant.2 "The purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power - to make available the commonsense [sic] judgment of the com- munity as a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps overconditioned or biased re- sponse of a judge." 3 A criminal defendant has a constitutional right to a trial by a jury derived from a jury pool composed of a cross-section of the community in which the crime occurred.' Exclusion of distinctive, also known as cognizable, groups within the community can occur at different stages of jury selection. Tor example, jury selection statutes can exclude cogniza- ble groups, such as African-Americans, when a list of all possible jurors * Member, Third Year Class; B.A., Northwestern University, 1986; C.Phil. University of California, Berkeley, 1988. The author thanks Louis Biggio and Professor David Levine for their valuble suggestions and criticism. 1. JON M. VAN DYKE, JURY SELECTION PROCEDURES: OUR UNCERTAIN COMMIT- MENT TO REPRESENTATIVE PANELS 9 (1977). 2. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 155-56 (1968); Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 100 (1970). 3. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 530 (1975) (citing Duncan, 391 U.S. at 155-56). 4. "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been commit- ted, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law ...." U.S. CONST. amend. VI. Under modem federal criminal procedure, the trial is held in the district in which the crime was committed. FED. R. CRIM. P. 18. A change of venue is permitted only when there is a danger of an unfair trial. FED. R. CRIM. P. 21. [261] HASTINGS CONSTITUTIONAL LAW QUARTERLY [Vol. 19:261 is compiled to form a "jury pool."' Jury selection systems can also ex- clude cognizable groups when prospective jurors, known as the "venire," are summoned to a courthouse to be considered to serve on a jury.6 In addition, discrimination can occur during voir dire, the selection of a particular jury for a trial.7 Discrimination at this stage typically consists of racially motivated peremptory challenges.8 The United States Supreme Court, relying on both the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial9 and Fourteenth Amendment Equal Pro- tection Clause,10 has protected a defendant's right to a jury representing a cross-section of the community from discriminatory practices. 1' The Court has yet to consider the effect vicinage has on representation of cognizable groups in the jury pool and venire.' 2 The site of a trial can profoundly affect the demographic composi- tion of the jury pool. Venue, the place where the trial is held,' 3 generally determines vicinage, the geographic origin of the jury.14 Both venue and vicinage influence the demographic composition of the jury pool and, in turn, the jury ultimately selected from it. 5. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 538 (1975); Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 363-64 (1979) (statutory scheme that diminished representation of women in the jury pool held unconstitutional). 6. See e.g., Hernandez v. Municipal Court, 781 P.2d 547 (Cal. 1989), cert denied, 110 S. Ct. 3222 (1990); Davis v. Warden, 867 F.2d 1003 (7th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 110 S. Ct. 285 (1989). 7. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) (racially discriminatory exercise of per- emptory challenges held unconstitutional). 8. Id. 9. See generally, Robert Wilson Rodriguez, Note, Batson v. Kentucky: Equal Protec- tion, The Fair Cross-Section Requirement, and the Discriminatory Use of Peremptory Chal- lenges, 37 EMORY L.J. 755 (1988). 10. "No State shall... deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." U.S. CONST. amend. XIV. See generally Rodriguez, supra note 9. 11. E.g., Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) (racially discriminatory exercise of per- emptory challenges held unconstitutional); Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975) (exclusion of women from jury service held unconstitutional). 12. Prior to Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968) (holding that the Sixth Amend- ment right to a jury trial applies to the states), and long before equal protection or cross- section of the community were considered, the Court interpreted the "vicinage" requirement loosely. E.g., Ruthenberg v. United States, 245 U.S. 480 (1918) (a district court may draw jurors from a single division within the district when it is unclear where the crime was commit- ted); Lewis v. United States, 279 U.S. 63 (1929) (held constitutional the conduct of a trial in the eastern district of Oklahoma, which failed to include the site of the crime). The Court's discussion of the historical roots of the Sixth Amendment vicinage provision in Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 96 (1970) suggests that a fair cross-section analysis may be implicit in interpreting the vicinage requirement. 13. Drew L. Kershen, Vicinage, 29 OKLA. L. REv. 801, 805 (1976). 14. Id. Venue, however, can be severed from vicinage. For example, the site of the trial, venue, could be moved, while the jury originates in a different geographical area. See id. at 804-05. Fall 19911 TRIAL BY A REPRESENTATIVE JURY In the absence of a definitive Supreme Court decision, different juris- dictions have reached varying conclusions about the interaction between the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and the Sixth Amendment vicinage requirements. These range from defining the vicinage to fairly represent the community to treating the vicinage provision as a substan- tively empty procedural rule.15 This Note considers (1) the early development of the Sixth Amend- ment vicinage requirement; (2) the development of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection of cognizable groups injury pools and the Sixth Amendment right to a jury drawn from the cross-section of the community; (3) the different approaches taken by varying jurisdictions; (4) an evaluation of the various approaches; and (5) a proposed approach to vicinage and venue that accommodates Sixth Amendment and Four- teenth Amendment concerns. I. The Early Development of the Sixth Amendment Right to a Trial by Jury A. Development of the Anglo-American Jury The jury evolved into a democratic institution over a number of cen- turies.16 The Anglo-American jury began as an instrument of the King of England that investigated civil complaints. 7 Originally, medieval ju- rors had personal knowledge of the crime. 8 The jury members acted as witnesses and also conducted investigations. 9 Accordingly, to be of any value, the jury needed to reside in the vicinity of the location of the crime.20 As residents of the community, the jury would be familiar with the parties and the dispute. The jury's role changed by the time of the American Revolution.2' 15. Williams v. Superior Court, 781 P.2d 537 (Cal. 1989); Hernandez v. Municipal Court, 781 P.2d 547 (Cal. 1989), cert denied, 110 S.Ct. 3222 (1990). 16. See generally John Marshall Mitnick, From Neighbor-Witness to Judge of Proofs: The Transformation of the English Civil Juror, 32 AM. J. LEGAL HIST. 201, 203-04 (1988); Van Dyke, supra note 1, at 2-9. 17. Mitnick, supra note 16, at 203-04. The development of the criminal jury paralleled that of the civil. Id. at 232. For a detailed discussion of medieval and colonial vicinage, see FRANCIS HELLER, THE SIXTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTIUTON OF THE UNITED STATES, 6-12, (1951); Kershen, supra, note 13, at 805-18 (1976). 18. Van Dyke, supra note 1, at 2. In the twelfth century, jurors were often noble juror- witnesses. Id. 19. Mitnick, supra note 16, at 203-04; Heller, supra note 17, at 8. 20. See Mitnick, supra note 16, at 203-04 (discussing juror's personal knowledge of dis- pute); Kershen, supra note 13, at 813-14; Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 93-94 (1970) and accompanying notes (citing 4 W. BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES, 350-51 (1768)). 21. Kershen, supra note 13, at 816. See Mitnick, supra note 16, at 220-26 (tracing the change in the jurors possessing personal knowledge). By the fourteenth century, jurors and witnesses had become separate classes. Mitnick, supra note 16, at 204. In the seventeenth 264 HASTINGS CONSTITUTIONAL LAW QUARTERLY [Vol.
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