No Records, No Right: Discovery & the Fair Cross-Section Guarantee

No Records, No Right: Discovery & the Fair Cross-Section Guarantee Nina W. Chernoff  ABSTRACT: Every criminal defendant has the right to a jury selected from a “fair cross-section” of the community—a pool of people reflecting the community’s racial and ethnic makeup. Yet there is substantial evidence that juries in state courts across the country do not reflect a fair cross-section of their communities, in violation of the Sixth Amendment and federal and state statutes. This Article exposes and analyzes one cause of racially unrepresentative juries: state courts’ failure to grant criminal defendants access to jury selection records. Jury selection records are critical because fair cross-section violations are frequently hidden from view. For example, a computer error caused the federal jury selection system in Connecticut to read the “d” in Hartford to mean “deceased,” and accordingly failed to call anyone from Hartford for jury service. This hidden error eliminated 63% of eligible African-Americans from the jury system and thereby produced a racially unrepresentative jury pool in violation of the fair cross-section guarantee. The flaw went undetected until a federal defendant obtained access to jury records under federal law. Yet under Connecticut law, a state defendant in that district would be prohibited from accessing the records that revealed the error. As a result of state laws like Connecticut’s, defendants are often denied access to the information they need to discover violations of the fair cross-section right. This Article provides the first scholarship analyzing the role of access to records in constitutional and statutory fair cross-section doctrine. It reveals the way in which the celebrated constitutional and statutory right to an impartial jury  Associate Professor, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. I am grateful for the research assistance and thoughtful contributions of Joseph Schofield, Kelly M. Burnett, and Michael Wynn, and for the insights of Ruthann Robson and Mark Raymond Sylvester. I also benefited from the feedback of Erin Collins, Miriam Baer, and Anders Kaye at the A.B.A. Criminal Justice Section Faculty Workshop; Kim Thomas, Amber Baylor, Vida Johnson, and Richard Frankel at the New York University Law School Clinical Law Review Writers’ Workshop; Samantha Buckingham, Cortney Lollar, and Andrew Ferguson at the PDS in the Legal Academy Symposium; and the attendees of the James T. Gathii Faculty Workshop Series at Albany Law School and the CUNY Law scholarship workshop. I welcome all feedback and can be reached at nina.chernoff@law.cuny.edu. 1720 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 101:1719 depends entirely on the ostensibly minor decision to grant or deny criminal defendants access to jury selection records. This Article begins by illustrating why fair cross-section violations are both invisible and harmful, and describes how federal law has responded by guaranteeing federal defendants a right to discovery. It uses an original 50-state survey to reveal that, in contrast to the federal system, the majority of states keep the door to the fair cross-section right locked by denying defendants access to the discovery key. In fact, 39 of the 50 states fail to provide access to the one set of records that defendants must have in order to enforce the right. This Article analyzes and critiques state court doctrine that elevates administrative concerns over the fair cross-section right, and concludes by proposing solutions that could accommodate courts’ concerns without jeopardizing the fair cross-section guarantee. I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1722 II. THE CONTEXT: A UNIQUE PROTECTION, AN INVISIBLE VIOLATION, AND A REAL HARM ...................................................................... 1725 A. D ISCRIMINATION I S THE D ISTINCTION B ETWEEN THE F AIR -C ROSS S ECTION AND E QUAL P ROTECTION G UARANTEES ................... 1725 B. A F AIR C ROSS -S ECTION V IOLATION I S I NVISIBLE AND THUS L EAVES D EFENDANTS D EPENDENT ON THE G OVERNMENT ................... 1726 1. AN INVISIBLE VIOLATION ............................................ 1726 2. DEFENDANTS ARE DEPENDENT ON THE GOVERNMENT ............................................................. 1733 C. A F AIR C ROSS -S ECTION V IOLATION C AUSES R EAL H ARM ....... 1736 1. The Purpose of the Jury Is to Reflect Community’s Judgment ................................................................... 1736 2. Racially Unrepresentative Juries Fail to Reflect a Community’s Judgment ........................................... 1738 3. Government Interest in Racially Representative Juries .......................................................................... 1745 4. American Juries May Not Be Racially Representative ........................................................... 1748 III. THE FAIR CROSS-SECTION RIGHT IN FEDERAL COURTS: AN EXPLICIT RIGHT TO DISCOVERY ................................................................. 1749 A. T HE JSSA: P URPOSE AND P LAIN L ANGUAGE P ROTECT THE F AIR C ROSS -S ECTION R IGHT AND P ROVIDE A CCESS TO J URY R ECORDS ............................................................................. 1750 1. The Purpose of the JSSA Is to Protect the Fair Cross-Section Right ......................................................... 1750 2. Plain Language of the JSSA Provides Access to Jury 2016] NO RECORDS, NO RIGHT 1721 Records ...................................................................... 1750 B. S UPREME C OURT R ECOGNIZES E NTITLEMENT TO J URY R ECORDS ............................................................................. 1752 1. Supreme Court Relies on JSSA’s Purpose and Plain Language in Granting Access to Records ............... 1752 2. Lower Federal Courts Recognize that JSSA’s Purpose Requires Access to Records ...................................... 1753 IV. THE FAIR CROSS-SECTION RIGHT IN STATE COURTS: INSUFFICIENT ACCESS TO RECORDS ................................................................... 1755 A. S TATE S TATUTES : I NADEQUATE P ROTECTION FOR F AIR C ROSS- S ECTION R IGHT ................................................................... 1756 B. S TATE C OURTS : I MPOSING B URDEN OF P ROOF IN A BSENCE OF S TATUTORY E NTITLEMENT TO D ISCOVERY ............................ 1757 V. STATE COURTS ERR IN IMPOSING BURDEN OF PROOF: CROSS-SECTION PURPOSE DEMANDS DISCOVERY ................................... 1760 A. F AIR C ROSS -S ECTION P URPOSE OF S TATE S TATUTES M ANDATES D ISCOVERY .......................................................................... 1760 B. F AIR C ROSS -S ECTION P URPOSE OF S TATE OR F EDERAL C ONSTITUTION M ANDATES D ISCOVERY ................................. 1763 VI. ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE OF STATE COURTS’ RATIONALES FOR DENYING ACCESS ......................................................................... 1764 A. C OURTS M AY D ENY D ISCOVERY B ASED ON L EGITIMATE C ONCERNS T HAT A RE N OT A CTUALLY T HREATENED BY D EFENDANTS ’ D ISCOVERY R EQUESTS .......................................................... 1765 1. Concerns About Protecting the Privacy of the Jury Are Legitimate, but Not Threatened by Discovery ........ 1765 2. Concerns for Judicial Efficiency and Administrative Burdens Are Legitimate, but Not Threatened by Discovery .................................................................... 1767 3. Concerns About the Scope of Remedies Are Legitimate, but Not Threatened by Discovery ........ 1769 B. C OURTS M AY D ENY D ISCOVERY B ASED ON A M ISUNDERSTANDING OF THE L AW ........................................................................ 1770 1. Confusing the Discovery Stage with the Merits Stage ........................................................................... 1771 2. Confusing Fair Cross-Section with Equal Protection .................................................................. 1771 3. Discomfort with a Burdenless Request and Distrust of Defense Motives .............................................1772 C. I NADEQUATE A DVOCACY M AY C ONTRIBUTE TO E RRONEOUS D ISCOVERY D ENIALS BY C OURTS ..................................1773 1722 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 101:1719 VII. CONCLUSION AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS .................................. 1774 I. INTRODUCTION Every criminal defendant has the right to a jury selected from a “fair cross-section” of the community—a pool of people reflecting the community’s racial and ethnic makeup. Yet substantial evidence suggests that jury pools across the country often do not represent a fair cross-section of communities. 1 As a result, criminal defendants—who are disproportionately African-American and Latino—may routinely face juries that are disproportionately white. 2 These disproportionately white juries are inconsistent with constitutional requirements for the proper operation of juries. They are inconsistent with social science data on the actual operation of juries. And racially underrepresentative juries are inconsistent with the laws of all 50 states that guarantee criminal defendants a jury selected from a fair cross-section of the community. This Article exposes and analyzes one reason the problem of underrepresentative juries has gone unchecked: the failure of states to grant defendants access to discovery about the jury selection system. To understand why discovery is the key to unlocking the fair cross-section right, consider the following example of a fair cross-section violation in Connecticut. Luis Osorio was facing criminal charges in the Hartford Division of the United States District Court for Connecticut. 3 Mr. Osorio suspected the jury pool underrepresented Hispanics and African-Americans. He alleged a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a jury selected from a fair cross-section of the community. 4 To make out a fair cross-section claim a defendant must do three things: First, identify a...