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In a unanimous opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that a defendant had not shown that a jury selection process that allegedly drained minorities from the jury pool before jurors in felony trials could be chosen was unconstitutional.

Diapolis Smith, a black defendant, was convicted by an all-white jury of second-degree murder and possession of a firearm.

He appealed, arguing that blacks were improperly excluded from the jury panel and the venire from which jurors were selected.

The Michigan Supreme Court concluded that there was no Sixth Amendment violation.

The 6th Circuit subsequently held, however, that the state court’s ruling that the selection process did not amount to a systematic exclusion was an unreasonable application of federal law.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in January.

In an opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the justices concluded that the 6th Circuit had erred in finding that the state court’s decision denied the defendant his Sixth Amendment rights.

It noted that the defendant argued a district-court-first assignment plan systemically excluded African-American jurors from the county jury pool.

However, that “belief was not substantiated by [his] evidence. … Evidence that African-Americans were underrepresented on the Circuit Court’s venires in significantly higher percentages than on the Grand Rapids District Court’s could have indicated that the assignment order made a critical difference. But … [the defendant] adduced no evidence to that effect. …

“No ‘clearly established’ precedent of this court supports [the defendant's] claim that he can make out a prima facie case merely by pointing to a host of factors that, individually or in combination, might contribute to a group’s underrepresentation. … This Court, furthermore, has never ‘clearly established’ that jury-selection-process features of the kind on [the defendant's] list can give rise to a fair cross-section claim. … [Accordingly,] the Michigan Supreme court’s decision rejecting [the] fair-cross-section claim … ‘involved [no] unreasonable application o[f] clearly established federal law.”

U.S. Supreme Court. Berghuis v. Smith, No. 08-1402. March 20, 2010. Lawyers USA No. 993-1744.

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