United States Ninth Circuit

Defendant's conviction of being a deported alien found in the United States is affirmed, where: 1) in cases alleging that jury selection procedures violate the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968, the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment, and the fair cross-section requirement of the Sixth Amendment, the absolute disparity test is overruled; 2) courts may use one or more of a variety of statistical methods to respond to the evidence presented, and the challenging party must establish not only statistical significance, but also legal significance; 3) here, even assuming that defendant established that the representation of African Americans and Hispanics in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community, he failed to provide evidence that such underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion by the Southern District, and therefore failed to establish a prima facie fair cross-section case under the Jury Selection Act or the Sixth Amendment; 4) because there is no evidence of discriminatory intent, the defendant cannot make out a prima facie case of an equal protection violation; and 5) the Southern District did not commit substantial violations of the Jury Selection Act.

Appellate Information

• Decided 04/30/2014
• Published 04/30/2014

Judges

• THOMAS

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel