UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Lemrick NELSON, Jr. and Charles Price, also known as Bald Black Man, Defendants-Appellants.
Nos. 98-1231, 98-1437
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Argued May 3, 2000. Supplemental Argument Jan. 9, 2001. Decided Jan. 7, 2002.
We reserve jurisdiction and remand to the BIA for the limited purpose of entertaining and resolving a motion by applicant to consider whether circumstances in China since 1993 have so changed that he has a well-founded fear that, given the totality of his actions, he would be subject to persecution if deported to China.6
F.I. Parker, Circuit Judge, filed opinion dissenting in part and concurring in part.
Straub, Circuit Judge, filed opinion dissenting in part.
Darell L. Paster, New York, NY, for Defendant-Appellant Charles Price.
Alan M. Vinegrad, Assistant United States Attorney and Valerie Caproni, Special Assistant United States Attorney, for Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Brooklyn, NY, and Jessica Dunsay Silver and Thomas E. Chandler, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice, for Bill Lann Lee, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Appellee United States of America.
Walter E. Dellinger, Jeremy Maltby, and Erika R. Frick, O‘Melveny & Myers, Washington, DC, for Amici Curiae NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (Elaine R. Jones, Theodore M. Shaw, and Norman J. Chachkin, of counsel) and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Barbara R. Arnwine, Thomas J. Henderson, and Nancy J. Anderson, of counsel).
Norman Redlich and Maritza U.B. Okata, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, New York, NY, for Amici Curiae American Jewish Congress (Marc D. Stern, of counsel), American Jewish Committee (Jeffrey Sinesky and Kara Stein, of counsel), Anti-Defamation League (Elizabeth J. Coleman and Steven M. Freeman, of counsel), Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (Marcia R. Eisenberg, of counsel), Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, Union of American Hebrew Congregations (Mark J. Pelavin, of counsel), Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (Nathan Diament, of counsel), and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (Harold Kalb, of counsel).
Nathan Lewin, Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, Washington, DC, for Amici Curiae National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (“COLPA“) (Dennis Rapps, COLPA, and David Zwiebel, Agudath Israel of America, of counsel) and Family of Yankel Rosenbaum.
Before: CALABRESI, F.I. PARKER, and STRAUB, Circuit Judges.
CALABRESI, Circuit Judge.
Lemrick Nelson, Jr. (“Nelson“) and Charles Price (“Price“) appeal their convictions and sentences, under
I. BACKGROUND
Shortly after eight o‘clock in the evening on August 19, 1991, a station wagon struck two children in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn, New York. The driver of the car was Jewish, and both children were African American. A crowd soon gathered at the scene of the accident. As some of its members attempted to aid the injured children, others began to attack the driver of the car.
The first ambulance to reach the scene was from a Jewish hospital and was readily identifiable as such by Hebrew writing on its sides. The driver of the car that had hit the children was treated by personnel from this ambulance, and, at the direction of police officers who had arrived, the ambulance quickly left the scene in order to protect the injured Jewish driver from the angry crowd. Shortly after the ambulance from the Jewish hospital departed, two New York City ambulances arrived at the accident site. Their crews gave medical assistance to the two injured African American children, and took them to the hospital. Both children had been seriously hurt; one ultimately died.
In the meantime, a crowd of several hundred people (watched over by between seventy and one hundred police officers) had formed in the neighborhood of the accident. Some members of the crowd complained about Jews and the preferential treatment that Jews allegedly received. They cited, as an example of this favored treatment, the fact that the Jewish driver had received medical attention before the African-American children even though the children were more seriously injured. Some members of the crowd began to throw objects.
At about eleven o‘clock, a bald, African American man later identified as defendant Price began addressing the crowd. Price‘s speech, which was captured on two videotapes (one made by an NBC cameraman covering the incident and the other made by the superintendent of a nearby building), was angry and aggressive and included, according to police and civilian witnesses, the following statements:
“[I]f it was a black man that did this they would have been gone to jail instead of being pulled inside of an ambulance for safekeeping.” (Trial Tr. (“Tr.“) 1573).
“We can‘t take this anymore. They‘re killing our children. The Jews get everything they want. The police are protecting them.” (Tr. 1369).
“What are we going to do about this? Are we going to take this anymore?” (Tr. 1143).
“Let‘s get the Jews” and “Eye for an eye. No justice no peace.” (Tr. 1692).
In response to Price‘s exhortations, many people in the crowd began to yell, “Get the Jews.” (Tr. 1073). Toward the end of his speech, Price shouted something to the effect of “Let‘s go to Kingston Avenue and get the Jews.”1 (Tr. 1377). Thereupon, a large part of the crowd, including Price and defendant Nelson (who had been in the crowd and had heard Price‘s speech) proceeded towards Kingston Avenue.
Witnesses testified that prior to Price‘s speech, the crowd was neither unified nor particularly out of control, but that after he spoke, it became transformed into an explosive mass. It also became violent, throwing objects and setting two cars on fire, attacking a Jewish couple who may have had a baby with them, and assaulting a second Jewish man as he exited a building on Kingston Avenue. As the crowd proceeded past Kingston Avenue and onto the next block (Brooklyn Avenue), it spotted Yankel Rosenbaum (“Rosenbaum“), a bearded man in orthodox Jewish dress. A member of the crowd, possibly Price, yelled “get‘em” and “there goes one.” (Tr. 1580, 1591). Someone else in the crowd was also heard to shout “get the Jew, kill the Jew.” (Tr. 1000).
On being targeted, Rosenbaum sought to escape the mob, running across Brooklyn Avenue and then across President Street. The crowd, however, caught up with him. A group of between ten and fifteen people, including Nelson, then began beating him, knocking him to the ground, and striking him repeatedly. Eventually, a police car approached the scene, causing the attacking group to scatter. Nelson attempted to flee with the rest of the crowd, but (according to an admission Nelson made to his girlfriend Travionne Shaw (“Shaw“)) Rosenbaum grabbed hold of Nelson‘s T-shirt and prevented him from making good his escape. After trying unsuccessfully, by other means, to induce Rosenbaum to let him go, Nelson (again according to the admission made to Shaw) stabbed Rosenbaum and fled.
Nelson was seen running away by the police and was subsequently caught; when searched, he was found to have a bloody knife in his possession. Although Nelson initially denied committing the stabbing, Rosenbaum, (before going to the hospital) identified Nelson out of a lineup of four African American males, and angrily asked him “[w]hy did you stab me?” (Tr. 1169). Testing conducted later, moreover, revealed that the blood on the knife found on Nelson (and also blood found on Nelson‘s trouser pocket) matched Rosenbaum‘s DNA and was inconsistent with Nelson‘s own DNA.2
Following Nelson‘s acquittal in New York State court, Nelson and Price (collectively the “defendants“) were indicted on federal charges. Nelson was charged with violating
Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with—
...
(2) any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin and because he is or has been—
...
(B) participating in or enjoying any benefit, service, privilege, program, facility or activity provided or administered by any State or subdivision thereof;
...
shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
The federal indictment against Nelson and Price principally alleged that the defendants
by force and threat of force did willfully injure, intimidate and interfere with, and attempt to injure, intimidate and interfere with, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew, because of his religion and because he was enjoying facilities provided and administered by a subdivision of the State of New York, namely, the public streets provided and administered by the City of New York, and bodily injury to and the death of Yankel Rosenbaum did result.
Superseding Indictment filed Aug. 14, 1996, at 1. The defendants filed pre-trial motions to dismiss the indictment against them on several grounds. The district court denied these motions, and the case went to trial before a jury.
From the outset of the trial, the district court (Trager, J.), no doubt responding to the politically charged nature of the case and to the controversial State court acquittal of Nelson,3 made clear his intention to empanel “a moral jury that renders a verdict that has moral integrity.” (Tr. 627). The district court stated that “[t]his trial is occurring for the same reason Rodney King‘s trial occurred, the second trial, because the first jury did not represent the
I have an agenda here which I have made very clear from the very beginning, to end up with a jury that represents the community that will have moral validity; and if there is a hung jury, that itself will be a statement to both sides about both what is the process and the problems are with our society. To me, justice will be served.5
(Tr. 759).
In pursuit of the aim of empaneling a religiously and racially mixed jury, the district court made three important jury selection decisions. First, the district court denied the defendants’ Batson challenge to the fact that the government, even though African Americans comprised only 30% of the jury pool, used 5 out of 9, or 55 %, of its peremptory challenges to strike African-American candidates from the jury. Second, the district court denied the defendants’ for-cause challenge of a Jewish juror (Juror 108) in spite of the fact that the juror had expressed grave doubts about his ability to be objective concerning the case and, when asked to “look into [his] heart” to determine whether he could “give the defendant[s] here a fair trial,” had responded “I don‘t know, I honestly don‘t know.” (Tr. 632). And third, when an African-American empaneled juror was excused, the district court did not simply replace this juror with the first alternate, who was white, but instead, sua sponte, removed a second (white) juror from the panel and filled the two spaces this created with an African-American juror and with the above mentioned Jewish Juror 108. Both of these jurors were selected out of order from the list of alternates in clear violation of
The district court took these unusual steps expressly to secure an empaneled jury containing both African Americans and Jews in a racial and religious balance that the district court believed would cause the public to “understand,” so that “nobody [could] complain whatever the result.” (Tr. 866). In response, defense counsel explicitly stated that this method of jury selection “would be agreeable to the defendants.” (Tr. 866). Moreover, the defendants themselves consented to the proposal and did so on the record.6
Both defendants now appeal.
II. DISCUSSION
We begin our discussion by addressing the defendants’ contentions concerning
A. 18 U.S.C. § 245(b)(2)(B) .
Nelson and Price present three arguments with respect to
1. The Constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 245(b)(2)(B) .
It is axiomatic that the federal government, as established under the Constitution, is a government of limited powers, so that the federal government enjoys no authority beyond what the Constitution confers, and any exercise of federal power is permissible only if it is authorized by the Constitution, as it has been amended and interpreted from time to time. See, e.g., McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 405 (1819) (“This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers.“); Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 176 (1803) (“[T]hat those limits may
Title 18, Section 245(b)(2)(B) of the United States Code makes it a federal crime for a person (even if acting in a purely private capacity) to injure someone else because of the victim‘s race or religion and because the victim was enjoying a public facility provided by any State or local government. The defendants claim that, at least if interpreted to reach their conduct in this case, the statute exceeds the powers that the Constitution grants to the federal government. The government rejects this contention and asserts that, as applied to these defendants, the statute is constitutional. At various points in this litigation, the government has argued that the grant of authority on which the constitutionality of
In its supplemental briefs, however, the government expressly declines to pursue the first of these arguments, observing that the Supreme Court‘s recent decision in United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 120 S.Ct. 1740, 146 L.Ed.2d 658 (2000), an interpretation of the State Action Doctrine9 (first articulated in United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629, 640, 1 S.Ct. 601, 27 L.Ed. 290 (1883), and in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 11, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835 (1883)) poses a significant obstacle to any reading of Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment as authorizing Congress to regulate private conduct of the kind at issue in the case at bar.10 Because the government no longer presents the
A. The Scope of the Thirteenth Amendment.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
In the case at bar, the government asserts that this constitutional provision authorizes the application of
In contrast to Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment, which famously includes the language “No State shall ...,” Section One of the Thirteenth Amendment eliminates slavery and involuntary servitude generally, and without any reference to the source of the imposition of slavery or servitude. Accordingly, it has been recognized from the Amendment‘s enactment that Congress‘s powers under the Thirteenth Amendment are not limited by any analogue to the State Action Doctrine that was early deemed to restrict the Fourteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment, unlike the Fourteenth, in and of itself reaches purely private conduct.
Thus it has long been settled that the Thirteenth Amendment “is not a mere
Although the Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1865, was enacted in the historical context of American slavery, which applied almost exclusively to African Americans, the interpretation of the Amendment itself has not been so limited. The text of the Amendment nowhere identifies or otherwise singles out those whose servitude the Amendment had specifically been enacted to address. And the Supreme Court early on held that although “negro slavery alone was in the mind of the Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any other kind of slavery, now or hereafter,” and would apply equally to “Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie labor system.”11 The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 72, 21 L.Ed. 394 (1873). The Court, moreover, re-affirmed this sentiment roughly thirty years later, explaining that the Thirteenth Amendment “is the denunciation of a condition, and not a declaration in favor of a particular people. It reaches every race and every individual, and if in any respect it commits one race to the nation, it commits every race and every individual thereof. Slavery or involuntary servitude of the Chinese, of the Italian, of the Anglo Saxon, are as much within its compass as slavery or involuntary servitude of the African.” Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1, 16-17, 27 S.Ct. 6, 51 L.Ed. 65 (1906). There can, therefore, be no doubt that the Thirteenth Amendment‘s prohibitions extend, at the least, to all race-based slavery or servitude.
Furthermore, “race” as used in Thirteenth Amendment jurisprudence is a term of art, whose meaning is not limited by today‘s usage.12 The fact that Jews
(the group to which the government seeks, through the application of
In establishing this conclusion, it will be useful to begin by describing
St. Francis College and Shaare Tefila make clear that
As noted above, these arguments apply, a fortiori, to the Thirteenth Amendment itself. For it is on the authority of the Thirteenth Amendment that the applications of these civil rights statutes developed in St. Francis College and Shaare Tefila depend. Accordingly, we find that Jews were among the “races” intended to be protected from slavery and involuntary servitude by the Thirteenth Amendment, and that Congress may today protect Jews pursuant to that Amendment.14
Finally, there is strong precedent to support the conclusion that the Thirteenth Amendment extends its protections to religions directly, and thus to members of the Jewish religion, without the detour through historically changing conceptions of “race” that we have just taken. Certainly there is nothing in the conceptual or linguistic structure of the prohibition of “slavery” and “involuntary servitude“—which appears in the Thirteenth Amendment, it is worth noting once again, unadorned by the adjective “racial“—that limits the banning of these evils only when they are imposed along racial lines. See Kozminski, 487 U.S. at 942 (“The primary purpose of the Amendment was to abolish the institution of African slavery ... but the Amendment was not limited to that purpose; the phrase ‘involuntary servitude’ was intended to cover those forms of compulsory labor akin to African slavery which in practical operation would tend to produce like undesirable results.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The most basic feature of “slavery” or “involuntary servitude“—the subjugation of one person to another by coercive means15—remains the same regardless of whether a person is subjugated on grounds
These conceptual and historical observations, moreover, find ample support in the case-law. To begin with, although St. Francis College casts its argument in terms of historical understandings of the meaning of the word “race,” the conclusion of the Court in that case—that
That the protections of the Thirteenth Amendment extend to private actions, and that Jews are entitled to the full measure of these protections, does not, however, settle the question now before us. It remains to be determined whether these protections (bestowed upon Jews or any other groups) suffice to authorize the congressional exercise of power at issue here—
B. The Power of Congress Under Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment.
The existence of the Amendment‘s second section, however, renders consider-
The enforcement power granted Congress by Section Two has not always been construed in the broad manner described above. See Risa L. Goluboff, The Thirteenth Amendment and the Lost Origins of Civil Rights, 50 Duke L.J. 1609, 1639 (2001). Thus, even though the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Cases interpreted the Thirteenth Amendment to authorize Congress to abolish not only chattel slavery itself but also to “pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery,” Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. at 20, it simultaneously suggested that the concept of “badges and incidents of slavery” might have a narrow construction. In particular, the Court held that the Congress‘s power to abolish the “badges and incidents of slavery” was limited to “secur[ing] to all citizens of every race and color ... those fundamental rights which are the essence
Moreover, regardless of whether this narrow reading was required to decide the Civil Rights Cases, it was expressly adopted roughly twenty years later, in Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1, 27 S.Ct. 6, 51 L.Ed. 65 (1906), when the Supreme Court reversed the convictions (under predecessors to
Both of these interpretations of the Thirteenth Amendment were adopted over ringing dissents by Justice Harlan (joined, in Hodges, by Justice Day). Justice Harlan argued that under the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress “acquired the power not only to legislate for the eradication of slavery, but the power to give full effect to this bestowment of liberty.” Id. at 29, 27 S.Ct. 6 (Harlan, J., dissenting). Consequently, Justice Harlan concluded, Congress enjoyed the power “to pass all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution” this power, id. at 25-26, 27 S.Ct. 6 (Harlan, J., dissenting), including laws to “make it impossible that any of [slavery‘s] incidents or badges should exist or be enforced in any State or Territory of the United States.” Id. at 27, 27 S.Ct. 6 (Harlan, J ., dissenting). Moreover, and most critically, Justice Harlan asserted that “[t]he form and manner of the protection [against slavery and involuntary servitude] may be such as Congress, in the legitimate exercise of its legislative discretion, shall provide.” Id. at 24, 27 S.Ct. 6 (Harlan, J., dissenting) (quotation marks omitted).
Although Justice Harlan‘s view of the Amendment has not been adopted in every particular, see supra footnote 16, the narrow construction of congressional power under Section Two—epitomized by Hodges—was expressly overruled. See Jones, 392 U.S. at 441 n. 78. And Justice Harlan‘s reading of the Thirteenth Amendment‘s enforcement clause, including, critically, his account of the scope of
The Supreme Court overruled Hodges and established this broader account of the enforcement power in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189 (1968).18 Jones involved a plaintiff who sought relief under
Subsequently, in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971), the Supreme Court expanded on the theme introduced in Jones. The Court upheld, under the Thirteenth Amendment, the constitutionality of
In upholding the statute—as applied to defendants who had conspired to assault and had, in fact, assaulted a group of
It seems to us that this set of cases necessarily depends on the notion that Congress has been vested, by Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment, with the authority to prohibit conduct that the courts are unable to say violates Section One directly. This theme is well (if indirectly) developed in two Supreme Court cases declining to invalidate local government actions under Section One of the Thirteenth Amendment but expressly suggesting that if Congress had enacted statutes prohibiting the challenged conduct pursuant to Section Two of the Amendment, then the prohibitions, which the Court was itself unwilling to impose, would have been upheld. Thus, in Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217, 227 (1971), the Supreme Court declared itself unwilling to hold that the City of Jackson‘s decision to close a municipal swimming pool rather than desegregate it violated the Thirteenth Amendment, but noted that “although the Thirteenth Amendment is a skimpy collection of words to allow this Court to legislate new laws to control the operation of swimming pools throughout the length and breadth of this Nation, the Amendment does contain other words that ... could empower Congress to outlaw ‘badges of slavery.’” The Court, after quoting Section Two, noted that “Congress has passed no law under this power to regulate a city‘s opening or closing of swimming pools.” Id. And in City of Memphis v. Greene, 451 U.S. 100, 128 (1981), the Court—even as it declined to hold that the closing of a city street (that began in a predominantly black neighborhood and traversed a predominantly white one) in and of itself contravened the Thirteenth Amendment—added, by way of explanation and contrast, that the case did “not disclose a violation of any of the enabling legislation enacted by Congress pursuant to
The difference between the Court‘s articulate unwillingness, in Palmer and Greene, to apply Section One of the Thirteenth Amendment where Congress had not acted under Section Two and its equally articulate willingness, in Jones, Griffin, Johnson, and Runyon, to affirm Congress‘s choices when it had acted under the latter section, serves to underscore the extent to which Congress‘s powers under
C. The Meaning and Significance Under the Thirteenth Amendment of the Language of Section 245(b)(2)(B).
The critical feature of
Since these additional elements of the statute are essential to its constitutionality, we must with particular assiduousness embark on an exercise of statutory interpretation to determine their meaning in
“The starting point in every case involving construction of a statute is the language itself.” Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723, 756 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring). Accordingly, “[w]hen confronted with a statute which is plain and unambiguous on its face, [a court] ordinarily do[es] not look to legislative history as a guide to its meaning.” Tenn. Valley Auth. v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 185 n.29 (1978) (citing Ex parte Collett, 337 U.S. 55, 61 (1949)). The meaning of
Specifically, the significance of the word “because,” as that word is used in defining the two aforementioned constitutionally crucial elements of the crime, is anything but plain. Causation is one of the most famously complicated concepts in language and in law. The ancient Greeks, for example, distinguished among four concepts all now covered by the modern English word “cause.” See Aristotle, The Metaphysics 983a-983b (distinguishing among the final, formal, material, and efficient causation). And the modern law of torts employs at least three concepts of cause: “cause-in-fact” or “but for” cause, “proximate” or “legal” cause, see Restatement (Third) of Torts, § 431 cmt. a (distinguishing these two), and “causal link” or “causal tendency.” See Liriano v. Hobart Corp., 170 F.3d 264, 271-72 (2d Cir. 1999) (emphasizing the significance of the last); Zuchowicz v. United States, 140 F.3d 381, 388 n.7 (2d Cir. 1998) (same); see also Guido Calabresi, Concerning Cause and the Law of Torts: An Essay for Harry Kalven, Jr., 43 Univ. of Chi. L.Rev. 69, 71 (1975) (identifying and differentiating these three causal concepts). Moreover, “because” appears in
In making this inquiry, we rely principally on the reports of the legislative Committees involved in drafting the statute and in steering it through Congress. The Supreme Court has said that these Reports, “which represent the considered and collective understanding of those Congressmen involved in drafting and studying proposed legislation,” constitute “the authoritative source for finding the Legislature‘s intent.” Garcia v. United States, 469 U.S. 70, 76 (1984) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). We therefore “eschew[] reliance on the passing comments of one Member, and casual statements from the floor debates,” id. (internal citations omitted), and focus on the Reports instead. In particular, we focus on that of the Senate Judiciary Committee, S.Rep. No. 90-721, since this is the only Committee to have considered and commented on the statute in a form that included both of the two “becauses” at issue here.
The Senate Judiciary Committee Report, after noting in passing that the first “because” entails that an act will come under the statute only if it is “motivated by the race, color, religion, or national origin of the victim,” S.Rep. No. 90-721, at 7 (1968), reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1837, 1844 (emphasis added), focuses more carefully on the meaning of the second “because” that appears in
In discussing this phrase, the Senate Committee began by noting that the version of the statute originally reported out by the House Judiciary Committee covered acts committed against a person because of her race, etc., and done “while” the person was using public facilities.
These background facts and Committee remarks establish that the Congress inserted the second “because” with the specific purpose of narrowing
Under the first interpretation, a racially motivated assault, for example, would be covered by the statute if the attacker sought out his victims exclusively in a public park (but not if the attacker followed a victim from her house and attacked her while she was in the park only because this happened to be where the first opportunity to assault her arose). Under the second and third interpretations, by contrast, an attack would not come under the statute even if the attacker only assaulted victims in the public park, unless the focus on victims who used the park was more than just a matter of convenience. To be covered, the victims’ public-park-use would itself have to be an intrinsic element of the attacker‘s intent or motivation, a reason, that is, for the assault. The most obvious examples of racially, etc., motivated attacks that implicate these latter senses of “because the victims used public facilities” are assaults that punish a member of a minority group for using the facilities or, relatedly, discourage that person from doing so in the future.
While the familiarity of racially or religiously (etc.) motivated violence allowed the Senate Judiciary Committee to assume
Two types of situations would be covered [by the statute]: interference intended to prevent present or future participation in a described activity by the victim, and interference intended as a reprisal against the victim for having participated in a described activity.
It is important to understand that acts of violence or force committed against members of a hated class of people with the intent to exact retribution for and create dissuasion against their use of public facilities have a long and intimate historical association with slavery and its cognate institutions. Thus there is widespread agreement among scholars of slavery that slavery in general (across cultural and historical periods) centrally involves the master‘s constant power to use private violence against the slave, see Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study 1-14 (1982) (noting that such violence is one of the three “constituent elements” of slavery), and that “slavery is preeminently a relationship of power and dominion originating in and sustained by violence.” David Brian Davis, Slavery and Human Progress 11 (1984). Moreover, the peculiar institution of American slavery unquestionably did not depart from this general rule. Southern States, for example, “decriminalized [private] violence inflicted upon blacks to the extent thought necessary to assert and preserve white supremacy.” Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime and the Law 30 (1997). And, in several States “legislators expressly deprived slaves who were violently abused by whites of the protections of the common law of crimes by passing exculpato-
Significantly, this practice of race-based private violence both continued beyond the demise of the institution of chattel slavery and was closely connected to the prevention of former slaves’ exercise of their newly obtained civil and other rights (rights that slavery had previously denied them), thereby presenting “a spectacle of slavery unwilling to die.” Jones, 392 U.S. at 445, 88 S.Ct. 2186 (Douglas, J., concurring). Thus “violence against blacks reached staggering proportions in the immediate aftermath of the [Civil War],” Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America‘s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877, at 119 (1988), and such violence was specifically directed at the exercise, by black Americans, of the rights and habits of free persons. See, e.g.,
As these studies suggest, there exist indubitable connections (a) between slavery and private violence directed against despised and enslaved groups and, more specifically, (b) between American slavery and private violence and (c) between post Civil War efforts to return freed slaves to a subjugated status and private violence directed at interfering with and discouraging the freed slaves’ exercise of civil rights in public places. It is in the shadow of these connections, and citing to Justice Douglas‘s characterization of slavery as “unwilling to die,” Jones, 392 U.S. at 445, 88 S.Ct. 2186 (Douglas, J., concurring), that the Eighth Circuit (the only Circuit previously to address the question of
On the basis of the foregoing analysis, we similarly conclude that
18 U.S.C. § 245(b)(2)(B) .
The defendants argue, next, that even if
A. Streets as Public Facilities.
Section 245(b)(2)(B) limits its scope to acts committed against victims because they are “participating in or enjoying any benefit, service, privilege, program, facility or activity provided or administered by any State or subdivision thereof.” The defendants contend that their conduct does not come under the statute because Rosenbaum was not “participating in or enjoying any benefit, service, privilege, program, facility or activity” when he was attacked.
merce, the activity in question has been some sort of economic endeavor”); Lopez, 514 U.S. at 559-60. And the activities regulated by
§ 245(b)(2)(B) unquestionably fall into this non-economic category.But the dominant theme in Lopez and Morrison was to protect from federal interference activities that are local in character and, in particular, these cases reflect the fear that a broad reading of the commerce power that allowed Congress to regulate even non-economic activities whenever these substantially affected interstate commerce “would effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a completely centralized government.” Morrison, 529 U.S. at 608, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (quoting Lopez, 514 U.S. at 556-57). It is in response to this worry that the Court has declined to adopt an expansive understanding of what might count as substantially affecting commerce. Under such a broad understanding, the Court opined, it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power, even in areas such as criminal law enforcement or education where States historically have been sovereign.” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 564.
The Thirteenth Amendment argument presented in the main text reveals, however, that private violence motivated by a discriminatory animus against members of a race or religion, etc., who use public facilities, etc., is anything but intrinsically a matter of purely local concern. Instead, such violence has long been intimately connected to a system of slavery and involuntary servitude that the Thirteenth Amendment made centrally a matter of national concern. And for this reason, congressional action taken to regulate such activity is not likely to infringe impermissibly on local affairs. It follows that laws such as
§ 245(b)(2)(B) (if the activity regulated also involves substantial effects on interstate commerce) may well be constitutional directly under the Commerce Clause, even after Lopez and Morrison, and even without any independent resort to the Thirteenth Amendment. The fact that Congress may regulate an activity pursuant to its Thirteenth Amendment powers in itself indicates that the regulated activity is fundamentally national rather than local. And, as a result, Congress might also, separately, opt to regulate the activity pursuant to its Commerce Clause powers. See S.Rep. No. 90-271 at 5, 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 1841-42.
In particular, the defendants argue that the Brooklyn city street on which Rosenbaum was attacked does not count as a “facility” within the meaning of
The defendants begin with the proposition that “facility” as used in
This argument need not detain us long, for it stumbles at its initial premise. As the defendants themselves concede, “[t]he starting point in interpreting a statute is its language, for ‘[i]f the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter.’” Good Samaritan Hosp. v. Shalala, 508 U.S. 402, 409 (1993) (citing Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842 (1984)). Therefore, if
Defendants’ suggestions to the contrary notwithstanding, the term “facility” clearly and unambiguously includes city streets within its meaning. A “facility” is “something that promotes the ease of any action, operation, transaction, or course of conduct” or “something (as a hospital, machinery, plumbing) that is built, constructed, installed or established to perform some particular function or facilitate some particular end.” Webster‘s Third International Dictionary 812-13 (1966). And a city street undoubtedly “promotes the ease of” travel and transportation within the city and is “built” and “constructed” to “perform [the] function [and] facilitate [the] end” of such travel and transportation. It therefore unambiguously falls within the clear meaning of the text of
B. The Defendants’ Motive and Intent.
In assessing the constitutionality of
In this appeal, the defendants attack the application of these motivation and intent requirements to them on formal and substantive grounds. The formal challenge is that the district court in its charge to the jury combined the two requirements. The substantive challenge is that the evidence was insufficient with respect to the second. The defendants claim that there is no evidence of any motive or intent to impose punishment or dissuasion on Rosenbaum because of his enjoying a city street, i.e., because of his engaging in the statutorily protected activity.34 We consider each argument in turn.
(a) The Formal Challenge.
In its jury instructions, the trial court, over the defendants’ objection, presented the dual requirements of motivation and intent imposed by
This argument is straightforwardly meritless. In its instructions to the jury, the district court expressly and repeatedly used the conjunctive “and” in referring to the statutory requirement that both class-based motivation and activities-based intent are required to sustain a conviction under
(b) The Substantive Challenge.
The defendants’ substantive argument concerning the activities-based “because” requirement presents a more serious question. The defendants may be contending, in this connection, that the evidence presented at trial was inadequate to establish that they possessed an activities-based motive which they may be saying is needed to sustain a conviction under
“A defendant challenging the sufficiency of the evidence bears a heavy burden.” United States v. Pipola, 83 F.3d 556, 564 (2d Cir. 1996). In addressing such a challenge, “we must consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the government.” United States v. Gore, 154 F.3d 34, 40 (2d Cir. 1998) (quotation marks omitted). And we “must credit every inference that could have been drawn in the government‘s favor.” United States v. Masotto, 73 F.3d 1233, 1241 (2d Cir. 1996) (quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, “[t]he jury‘s verdict must be sustained, ‘if any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979).” Gore, 154 F.3d at 40. Finally, “[t]hese principles apply whether the evidence being received is direct or circumstantial.” Id.
In contrast to the evidence in Franklin and Lane, the only evidence on which the government can rely in the case at bar is the circumstantial evidence that the defendants and the mob they incited or belonged to sought out their victims exclusively on city streets, and that the natural and foreseeable consequence of the attacks, given the victims’ locations, was both an interference with these victims’ contemporaneous use of the streets and an intimidation and deterrence against their future use of such streets. Against this evidentiary backdrop, and immediately after repeating its instruction that
In this regard, I instruct you that you may infer that a person ordinarily intends all the natural and probable consequences of an act knowingly done. In other words, you may infer and find that the defendants intended all the consequences that a person, standing in like circumstances and possessing like knowledge, should have expected to result from the acts he knowingly committed.
I also instruct you that the mere presence of a defendant where a crime is being committed, even coupled with knowledge that a crime is being committed, or the mere acquiescence by a defendant in the criminal conduct of others, even with guilty knowledge, is not sufficient to establish guilt of the crime charged here.
(Tr. 3024-36).
The jury convicted the defendants in response to this instruction, and specifically to the statement that “you may infer and find that the defendants intended all the consequences that a person, standing in like circumstances and possessing like knowledge, should have expected to result
Once the defendants’ sufficiency challenges are understood in this way, it becomes clear that their arguments in this connection must be rejected. To begin with, it is well-settled that, as a general matter, criminal intent may be proven by circumstantial evidence. See United States v. Atehortva, 17 F.3d 546, 550 (2d Cir. 1994). And, it is equally well established that, while a jury instruction in a criminal case that the law presumes that a person intends the ordinary consequences of his voluntary acts violates due process, see Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510 (1979), an instruction that merely permits a jury to infer that an accused intends such consequences of such acts is acceptable, see Francis v. Franklin, 471 U.S. 307, 315 (1985). The instruction in the case at bar, which contained the language “you may infer,” is unambiguously of the latter, and generally permissible, variety.38
The specific inference that the district court instructed the jury that it might draw—from an attack on a city street by participants in a mob roving the streets, to a specific intent to interfere with, intimidate, or dissuade the street-based activities of the victim of the attack—is, moreover, also permissible. Whether a particular inference falls within the general rule that a jury may conclude that an actor intended foreseeable consequences of his actions depends upon whether a jury‘s conclusion that a consequence of the actions is foreseeable is “rooted in reason or common sense.” Payne v. LeFevre, 825 F.2d 702, 707 (2d Cir. 1987). Here, the defendants’ actions clearly had the foreseeable effect of interfering with Rosenbaum‘s contemporaneous and immediate use of the city street on which he was attacked, and had this effect in a manner that could not possibly go unnoticed. Furthermore, the long-standing and intimate connection between public violence and racial and religious oppression, see supra pages 189-91, and the fear felt by victims of violence, in particular by those who have been singled out on the basis of their race or religion, convince us
Moreover, as indicated earlier, we believe that the statute, while concerned with racial motivation and animus, did not impose a similar motivation requirement with respect to interference with participation in the relevant activities. That is, while we agree that a class-based motivation is required by the statute, proof of an activities-based intent is enough. We thus reach a conclusion similar to that presented in the Senate Committee Report, namely that evidence that a victim was attacked while actually engaged in a protected activity would ordinarily “be enough to send the [question of activities-based intent] to a jury, because such facts would afford the basis for an inference that the assailant did intend to interfere with the protected activity.” S.Rep. No. 90-721 at 9, reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 1844.39 And we reject the defendants’ challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence presented against them.
We note, as a final matter, that we are not alone in reaching this conclusion in a case in which the only evidence of activities-based intent is circumstantial. At least two other Circuit Courts have done the same pursuant to
[t]he jury could ... have found that [the defendant‘s] remarks were intended to make [the victim‘s] remaining on the premises uncomfortable and embarrassing and to intimidate and dissuade him from remaining on the premises. ...
Ebens, 800 F.2d at 1429. Similarly, the Eighth Circuit held that even where there was no specific evidence of activities-intent and a defendant argued that an attack “only incidentally” occurred at a federal swimming area, the defendant‘s sufficiency challenge to his conviction under
B. The Selection of the Jury.
Having determined that
As we have described, see supra pages 171-72, the district court expressed concern throughout the jury selection process that any jury that was finally empaneled should “represent[ ] the community.” (Tr. 759). This meant to the district court that the jury should contain appropriate numbers of African Americans and Jews. Although the district court was clearly interested in seating close to an equal number of African Americans and Jews on the jury, the makeup of the jury pool—which had very few Jews in it—caused the district court‘s concern for such racial and religious balance to express itself principally, although by no means exclusively, in the form of efforts to prevent the final jury from containing too many African Americans and too few Jews.41
In this respect, the district court made three related decisions, each of which the defendants now appeal. First, the district court denied the defendants’ objection, made pursuant to Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), to the fact that even though the jury pool was 30% African-American, the government used 55% of its peremptory challenges to strike African American candidates from the jury.41 Second, the district court denied the defendants’ for-cause challenge against a Jewish juror (Juror 108) who had expressed grave doubts about his ability to be objective concerning the case, stating that he was “pretty sensitive” to issues affecting the Jewish community and that he was “disappointed” by the outcome of defendant Nelson‘s state murder trial. (Tr. 619-21). The district court denied the challenge in spite of the fact that at a second round of voir dire, in which the district court expressly asked Juror 108 to “look into your heart and ask yourself whether you feel personal emotional internal pressures that would make it such that you couldn‘t give the defendant here a fair trial,” Juror 108 answered “I don‘t know. I honestly don‘t know.” (Tr. 632). And third, when an African American empaneled juror was excused because of illness,42 the district court sua
In this way, the district court secured what it deemed to be adequate numbers of African Americans and Jews on the main jury. Specifically, the final jury panel contained three African Americans, Jewish Juror 108, and another juror who, although she did not describe herself as Jewish, had Jewish parents.
That the district court was at once intent on achieving this or an equivalent result, and was fully aware that doing so might require adopting controversial methods, may be seen from the fact that, shortly before performing these manipulations, the court stated:
I will not allow this case to go to the jury without 108 as being a member of that jury, and how that will be achieved I don‘t know. It may well be just by people falling out. It may well happen, in which event I propose never to make any findings on this issue, and if I can I would seal the whole discussion because I see it serving no one‘s interest. I am not sure I can get away with that. I don‘t know if the press will allow it, but I don‘t think it would serve the public‘s interest to have this discussion go on the record, and especially, if I don‘t make any findings and I hope that I will not have to make any findings.
(T. 758). Despite this fact, the defendants’ counsel expressly stated that this third manipulation of the jury selection process “would be agreeable to the defendants,” (Tr. 866), and the defendants themselves consented to the proposal on the record.
On appeal, the defendants contend that all three of the district court‘s jury-selection actions constitute reversible error.44 Because we conclude that the facts underlying the defendants’ second and third arguments taken together give rise to a meritorious challenge to the defendants’ convictions, we need not consider the first claim. And so it is to the second and third arguments to which we now turn.
While normally we would treat these two claims separately from each other, (a) the unusual nature of the district court‘s race- and religion-based reshuffling, (b) the government‘s assertion that defendants—through the same acts—properly waived both their second and third challenges, and (c) the government‘s concessions—made on appeal—with respect to the third argument, render it necessary that we examine the second and third contentions in relation to each other.
In doing so, we face a series of complex questions: (a) whether a jury that is selected by a district court intentionally to achieve racial and religious objectives is a valid jury, (b) whether invalidity—if any—in a jury so selected constitutes a constitutional defect or—even if not necessarily unconstitutional—represents district court behavior that must be precluded by appellate courts in the exercise of their supervisory authority, (c) whether the flaws in
Because we believe both (a) that in the case before us a biased juror was seated and (b) that the consent given to the selection of that juror was invalid, since it was obtained in exchange for the improper empaneling of a jury chosen partly on the basis of race and religion, we conclude that the defendants’ convictions cannot stand. And we do so without giving ultimate answers to some of the other extraordinarily difficult questions that consensual racial or religious jurymandering present.
1. The Impartiality of the Jury.
The
In the case at bar, Juror 108, from the beginning of his voir dire, expressed concern for events affecting the Jewish community and, in particular, voiced his dissatisfaction with the State proceedings that resulted in defendant Nelson‘s acquittal. Moreover, on further questioning, Juror 108 said that although he “would like to think” of himself as objective and able to give the defendants a fair trial, he “[h]on- estly ... [didn‘t] know” whether he could do so. (Tr. 619-21). And, the last answer Juror 108 gave when the district court asked him once again whether he could set aside his personal feelings and give the defendants a fair trial was “I don‘t know. I honestly don‘t know.” (Tr. 632).
In spite of these statements, and in the context of its express desire to ensure that the empaneled jury contained an adequate number of Jewish jurors, the district court denied the defendants’ for cause challenge to Juror 108. Then, by the unusual—and indeed illegal, see
We review a district court‘s rejection of a defendant‘s for cause challenge to a juror for abuse of discretion. Murray, 618 F.2d at 899. Indeed, “[t]here are few aspects of a jury trial where we would
In spite of this deferential standard of review, we conclude that the district court abused its discretion, and committed reversible error, in denying the defendants’ for cause challenge to Juror 108. We believe, in other words, that Juror 108 sufficiently revealed actual bias in his answers during voir dire to require his exclusion from the jury. “[A] voir dire admission by the prospective juror of a state of mind prejudicial to a party‘s interest,” United States v. Haynes, 398 F.2d 980, 984 (2d Cir. 1968), is the most common and direct ground on the basis of which actual bias is found to exist. The admissions, indeed the repeated and persistent admissions, made to the district court by Juror 108 are precisely of this sort. As two of our sister courts have said, “[d]oubts about the existence of actual bias should be resolved against permitting the juror to serve, unless the prospective panelist‘s protestation of a purge of preconception is positive, not pallid.” Bailey v. Bd. of County Comm‘rs, 956 F.2d 1112, 1127 (11th Cir. 1992) (quoting United States v. Nell, 526 F.2d 1223, 1230 (5th Cir. 1976)). And as a third has added, “a juror who ‘could probably be fair and impartial’ should not be considered impartial, because United States v. Sithithongtham, 192 F.3d 1119, 1121 (8th Cir. 1999).” This is especially so when, as in this case, the potential bias does not represent only a general state of mind but also a predisposition to believe in the guilt of one of the very defendants who is being tried.47
Furthermore, although we have acknowledged that, “it is the rare juror who could honestly ‘guarantee’ that his feelings about the particular type of crime alleged would in no way affect his deliberations.” United States v. Murray, 618 F.2d 892, 899 (2d Cir. 1980), we have also called it “crucial” that in spite of these predispositions, a prospective juror should “state[ ] in effect that she would do her best to determine the case on the evidence presented,” and that she has “made clear that her [predispositions] would not affect her judgment, and that she would determine the case solely on the evidence presented.” Id. Thus, it is important that a juror who has expressed doubts about his or her impartiality also unambiguously assure the district court, in the face of these doubts, of her willingness to exert truly best efforts to decide the case without reference to the predispositions and based
Juror 108, having, inter alia, expressed his chagrin with defendant Nelson‘s state trial acquittal, never purged himself of his preconceptions. He never even asserted that he could probably be impartial. And he never promised to focus his attention on the evidence presented at trial. Specifically, Juror 108 never “made clear ... that [ ]he would determine the case solely on the evidence presented,” Murray, 618 F.2d at 899, or “promise[d] that [ ]he would try to decide the case based on the evidence presented,” Towne, 870 F.2d at 885, or said “that he would do his best,” Ploof, 464 F.2d at 118, to decide the case in this impartial way. The most that Juror 108 said was that he would “like to think” that he could be impartial, but that he “honestly [didn‘t] know.”
The principal reason for which jurors are dismissed for cause is that “they are unwilling or unable to follow the applicable law.” United States v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606, 616 (2d Cir. 1997). In the case at bar, this is the failing Juror 108 in effect admitted to and did not adequately take back. In light of this failing, we hold that the district court abused its discretion when it denied the defendants’ for cause challenge to that juror.
This is not a case, moreover, in which, in spite of an erroneous refusal to strike a biased juror for cause, that biased juror was not in the end empaneled, so that “the jury which was ultimately selected was fair and impartial.” Towne, 870 F.2d at 885 (“Since appellant has in no way established the partiality of the jury that ultimately convicted him, he may not successfully claim deprivation of his sixth amendment or due process rights.”). That is, this is not a case in which, for example, an erroneous refusal to strike a biased juror for cause meant that the defendants had to use up one of their peremptory strikes to remove the offending juror from the pool. See Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 88 (1988) (“[T]he fact that the defendant had to use a peremptory challenge to achieve [the result of an impartial jury] does not mean that the Sixth Amendment was violated.”); United States v. Rubin, 37 F.3d 49, 54 (2d Cir. 1994) (holding that where an impartial jury was finally empaneled, the need to waste peremptory challenges to eliminate jurors whom the trial court should have removed for cause cannot be the basis of a Sixth Amendment challenge); see also United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. 304, 307 (2000) (“[I]f the defendant elects to cure [a trial court‘s erroneous refusal to strike a juror for cause] by exercising a peremptory challenge, and is subsequently convicted by a jury on which no biased juror sat, he has not been deprived of any rule-based or constitutional right [i.e., of any right under the Sixth Amendment or under the Due Process Clause applied in connection with the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure].”).
We are faced, instead, with a case in which the district court‘s erroneous refusal to strike Juror 108 on account of his bias, together with its other jury selection actions (to be discussed in due course), wrongly resulted in the empanelment of a jury on which the biased juror sat. Consequently, the defendants in this case were convicted, in contravention of the Sixth Amendment and due process, by a jury that cannot be deemed to have been fully impartial.48
2. The Significance of Defendant‘s Consent to the Seating of Juror 108
The district court‘s error in failing to strike Juror 108 for cause, coupled with its subsequently empaneling the biased juror, would ordinarily require us, without further analysis, to vacate the judgment of conviction and remand the case for a new trial before an unbiased fact finder. This case, however, presents an additional and crucial complication, namely that the defendants—after originally objecting to the district court‘s failure to dismiss Juror 108 for cause—subsequently did not merely fail to challenge the plan by means of which the district court placed Juror 108 on the main jury panel. Instead, they, both through their counsel, and by their own direct personal statements, expressly consented to the scheme.
The government argues that this express consent constituted a waiver—that is, the “intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right,” Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464 (1938)—of the defendants’ objections to the district court‘s refusal to strike Juror 108 for cause. And the same consent, the government asserts, also negated whatever possible objections the defendants might have had to the failure of impartiality that might have been imparted to the jury as a result of empaneling Juror 108. As the government points out, a mere forfeiture, or failure timely to assert a right, does not preclude appellate review for “plain error” under
Some time ago, we indicated in powerful dicta that the right to an impartial fact finder might be inherently unwaivable. We said:
It has been asserted that a defendant cannot waive those rights without enforcement of which the proceedings against him would be fundamentally unfair. Among such non-waivable rights would be the right to be tried by an impartial tribunal, the right to be tried by a court free from mob domination—and the right not to be convicted solely upon the basis of a coerced confession. Perhaps Mr. Justice Frankfurter was referring to this concept of non-waivable rights when he said [that ordinary principles of waiver] “do not touch one of those extraordinary cases in which a substantial claim goes to the very foundation of a proceeding....”
United States v. Fay, 300 F.2d 345, 350-51 (2d Cir. 1962) (quoting Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 503 (1953)) (internal citation omitted and emphasis added).50
In expressing our continued allegiance to this dicta, we begin by making clear what we do not question. Thus we do not take issue with the uncontestable principle, applied in any number of cases dealing with any number of contexts, that even mere forfeiture of claims, including claims that attack the fundamental fairness of criminal proceedings, precludes all but plain error review of district court decisions. See generally Olano, 507 U.S. at 732. Nor do we assert that the technical requirements of
Instead of addressing these or other broader questions, we limit our concern to the very narrow set of facts before us. Where the trier of fact in a criminal trial is a biased jury that resulted from a district court‘s erroneous failure to grant a for-cause challenge to an actually biased juror whose bias was revealed at voir dire, we question whether a defendant can subsequently waive his claim that he has been deprived of the right to be tried before an impartial fact finder. At the root of our concern is the fundamental, indeed foundational, role impartiality plays in our system of courts. Thus, quite apart from offending the Sixth Amendment, trying an accused before a jury that is actually biased violates even the most minimal standards of due process. See In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955) (“A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process.“); cf. In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257 (1948); Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510 (1927).
Having said all of this, we do not need to decide today whether in every such case the seating of a clearly biased juror who had earlier been challenged is unwaivable. For it is clearly the case that, even if such an act is waivable, the waiver must be totally free and uncoerced and any consideration given for the consent must be utterly free from taint. It must be so to overcome what the Supreme Court has called the “presumption against the waiver of constitutional rights.” Brookhart v. Janis, 384 U.S. 1, 4 (1966). And we do not believe that the consideration given in this case comes close to meeting this test.
In the context most nearly analogous to the one before us—the waiver, by guilty plea, of the right (among others) to trial by jury, see McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459 (1969)—the presumption against a valid consent plays itself out in the form of the rule that a guilty plea is good only if “entered by one fully aware of the direct consequences of [the plea], including the actual value of any commitments made to him by the court.” Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 755 (1970) (internal
With these requirements in mind, and to see whether the consent given to the seating of Juror 108 was valid, we must examine what the defendants were offered in exchange for their waiver.
3. The Race-and-Religion-Based Reshuffling of the Jury.
At the close of the orderly process of jury selection, the district court faced a jury that it viewed as insufficiently racially and religiously diverse. When one of the empaneled jurors was excused because of illness, the district court formulated a novel plan in order to cure this perceived defect. As is by now familiar, the court sua sponte removed a second, and white, juror from the main panel and then filled the two newly open places on the jury with an African American and a Jewish juror (Juror 108) respectively, both of whom were selected from the list of alternate jurors out of order. Furthermore, the record leaves no room for doubting that it was the jurors’ race and religion that motivated the district court‘s choice of which juror to remove from the main panel and its decision to move the two chosen alternate jurors onto the main panel ahead of the non-African-American, non-Jewish jurors who were next in line.52
What the district court did in its effort to achieve a racially and religiously balanced jury was unquestionably highly unusual. It was also improper. The error is made plain by the reasoning behind Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 89 (1986), and Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 59 (1992), in which the Supreme Court held that neither prosecutors nor defendants could, without violating the Equal Protection Clause, exercise peremptory strikes on the basis of race. After these cases it is beyond peradventure that the racial and religious reconstruction of the jury that occurred in this case could not constitutionally have been achieved at the instigation of the parties. And what the district court could not allow the parties to do, it also could not do of its own motion even with the consent of the parties. Indeed, the violation of equal protection that occurs when a person is excluded from a jury on the basis of his race (or religion) would seem only to be made more serious when the exclusion occurs at the behest not just of the parties but of the court itself, whose duties under the Equal Protection Clause are particularly strong. And, although the motives behind the district court‘s race- and religion-based jury selection procedures were undoubtedly meant to be tolerant and inclusive rather than bigoted and exclusionary, that fact cannot justify the district court‘s race-conscious actions. The significance of a jury in our polity as a body chosen apart from racial and religious manipulations is too
As the Supreme Court has said, “[t]he Fourteenth Amendment‘s mandate that race discrimination be eliminated from all official acts and proceedings of the State is most compelling in the judicial system.” Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 415 (1991).53 Indeed, so central is equal protection to the legitimate functioning of the courts and specifically of juries that Congress has enacted a separate statute mandating that “[n]o citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court of the United States, or of any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
This is so, moreover, regardless of whether the racial and religious jurymandering engaged in by the court formally violated the Equal Protection Clause, or simply came to the very edge of doing so. For, even if such actions were not unconstitutional, they would still be sufficiently inappropriate to a federal court as to be subject to our inherent supervisory authority. Our authority over the district courts, though “not a form of free-flowing justice, untethered to legal principle” does allow us to “ensure that fair standards of procedure are maintained” and “to review procedures used in federal courts [without being] limited to ascertaining whether they are constitutionally valid.” United States v. Ming He, 94 F.3d 782, 792 (2d Cir. 1996) (citing McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 340 (1943)).
The government contends, however, that since in this case the parties agreed to the racial and religious reconstruction of the jury, as they undoubtedly did, whatever objections (either constitutional or otherwise) exist to the court‘s action have been waived and cannot now be raised. The difficulty with this argument is that, if it were to be countenanced, parties could always, with the court‘s consent, empanel a jury that was of precisely the racial and religious mix that they wished. If the court was of like mind, there would be nothing to stop civil litigants from agreeing, for example, that a contract or tort action between them should be heard by a jury composed only of members of their own racial or religious groups. And all Congress‘s and the Supreme Court‘s language about “race neutrality in jury selection” as a “measure of the judicial system‘s commitment to the commands of the Constitution,” Powers, 499 U.S. at 416, would be a dead letter. Of course, parties can, in appropriate situations, opt out of the judicial system—say by agreeing to arbitration. And if they do so,
It is for analogous reasons that the Supreme Court has treated as unwaivable a formally similar, if substantively very different, claim involving a threat to another set of judicial structures. In Freytag v. Comm‘r, 501 U.S. 868 (1991), the Supreme Court considered a challenge, under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Art II, § 2, cl. 2, to the authority of the Chief Judge of the United States Tax Court to appoint Special Trial Judges to preside over tax disputes, pursuant to
Perhaps recognizing the fundamental problems that would adhere to permitting waivers of racially and religiously tested jurors, the government at oral argument in effect conceded that such arrangements should be forbidden in the future, regardless of the parties’ consent. But it urged the court to permit the waiver, in view of the lack of express prior judicial disapproval of what had occurred, and to ratify, just this once, what the district court had done.54 Thus at the first of two oral arguments held on this appeal, the following colloquy occurred:
The Government: There have been cases that this Court has essentially decided that certain procedures were improper and would not be condoned in the future on a prospective basis. That‘s happened. And this might be such a case.
The Court: How do we do that? Do we say that in this case [we affirm the conviction below] but in the future, if the prosecution agrees to something like this, it is acting at its peril because in the future we will reverse?
The Government: Sounds good.
The Court: What?
The Government: Sounds good.
The Court: Sounds better to you than it does to me, maybe.
The Government: Read it over a few times. You‘ll get used to it, Judge.
Oral Argument Tr., May 3, 2000, at 48-49.
In the end, however, we need not decide whether the government‘s “prospective only” proposal should be accepted. As
The defendants before us did not consent to the empaneling of Juror 108 standing alone. They agreed to his seating only in the context of the district court‘s larger scheme to secure a jury that displayed the racial and religious diversity that the district court desired. In effect, the defendants, at the district court‘s prompting, consented to the placement of Juror 108 on the panel in exchange for the assignment to the panel, of an additional African-American juror in the place of a different white juror who would otherwise have been seated. This exchange, however, was improper, because the benefit to be received by the defendants in connection with the exchange—the replacement by the court of a white juror with an African American juror solely on the basis of race—was itself improper. And this impropriety invalidated any waiver of the defendants’ complaint concerning Juror 108‘s bias that might otherwise be found in their acceptance of the district court‘s larger plan.56
We conclude that the district court erred in declining to remove Juror 108 from the jury for actual bias, and that the defendants’ acceptance of the district court‘s jury-packing scheme (which placed Juror 108 on the jury) did not constitute a valid waiver of that error and of their claim of unconstitutional bias in the jury before which their case was tried. That is, we hold that a waiver to a juror‘s impartiality cannot be accepted when it was obtained by the promise of seating a jury
C. Remaining Issues.
In addition to presenting the claims we have discussed in the preceding parts of this opinion, the defendants raise a series of other challenges to their convictions and sentences. All but two of these are rendered moot by our conclusion that the invalidity of the jury that convicted the defendants requires that we vacate their convictions and remand the case for a new trial. The two remaining challenges—which argue that defendant Nelson‘s prosecution in federal court following his acquittal on New York State second degree murder charges violated double jeopardy and that defendant Price‘s prosecution for aiding and abetting rested on a legally insufficient theory of liability—ask us to order that verdicts of acquittal be entered. Because they seek more than the new trial that we are granting to the defendants, we must consider the arguments on which they depend. Since, however, both challenges are straightforwardly meritless, neither needs detain us long.
Even assuming that defendant Nelson‘s state prosecution for second degree murder and his federal prosecution under
An exception to the dual sovereignty doctrine does exist for cases in which “one of the sovereigns effectively controlled the other, and the subsequent prosecution was merely a sham, masking a second prosecution by the sovereign that pursued the first prosecution.” See United States v. Arena, 180 F.3d 380, 399 (2d Cir. 1999) (citing Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121, 123-24 (1959)). But that exception plainly does not apply in the case at bar. There is simply no evidence that the State of New York manipulated the federal government into engaging in the present prosecution. And this prosecution manifestly serves a clear and strong federal interest, namely the protection of civil rights. See United States v. All Assets of G.P.S. Auto. Corp., 66 F.3d 483, 495 (2d Cir. 1995) (“[T]he Bartkus exception ... applies only in an extraordinary type of case, perhaps only when one sovereign has essentially manipulated another sovereign into prosecuting.” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)); United States v. Davis, 906 F.2d 829, 832 (2d Cir. 1990) (noting that where “the state proceeding has not adequately protected the federal interest,” “nothing prevents a [subsequent] federal prosecution“).58
Equally meritless is defendant Price‘s claim that the causal link between his speech at the scene of the accident that led to the rioting and violence and the eventual attack on Rosenbaum is insufficient, as a matter of law, to support his aiding and abetting liability for that attack. Under
III. CONCLUSION
We hold that
Accordingly, the judgment of conviction of the district court is VACATED, and the case is REMANDED for retrial before a properly chosen, impartial jury.
PARKER, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I wholly concur with Section II.B. of the majority opinion, which vacates the conviction because of the inappropriate way in which the jury was selected. I also concur in the majority‘s conclusion in Section II.A. that
I. The Constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 245(b)(2)(B) under the Thirteenth Amendment
I agree with that portion of the majority‘s analysis which concludes that the Thirteenth Amendment provides Congress with the authority to prohibit violent acts directed at persons by virtue of their religion. In other words, I agree that Congress‘s power to enforce the elimination of slavery in this country is not limited to enslavement, or its badges and incidents, by virtue of race.
I do not agree with the majority‘s statement, however, that there is “strong precedent” to support the view “that the Thirteenth Amendment extends its protections to religions directly and thus to members of the Jewish religion, without” regard to race. The fact is that the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted in response to the enslavement of African-Americans in this country, and congressional enactments pursuant to the Amendment have been directed at the plight of African-Americans in the aftermath of that enslavement. It is not surprising, therefore, that the case law has addressed itself to situations arising out of racial rather than religious or other discrimination. Precedent suggesting that the Thirteenth Amendment is not restricted to racial animus is limited. We have the dicta in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 102 (1971), that “perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminating animus” may be addressed under the Thirteenth Amendment, and the fact that in United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931 (1988), protection against involuntary servitude was addressed without consideration of the class to which the victims belonged.
However, it is beyond dispute, as the opinion states, that the Thirteenth Amendment does not make any reference to race. It abolishes “slavery” and “involuntary servitude.” Given the fact, pointed out in the majority opinion, that throughout history enslavement has occurred without regard to race, there is every reason to conclude that the Thirteenth Amendment is not limited to slavery that is imposed by virtue of race.
Nor do I agree with that portion of the majority‘s analysis which indicates that because Jews were considered to be a race at the time of the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress has the power to provide religious protection under
The defendants argue that there is insufficient evidence to support a finding that the defendants acted “because” the victim Rosenbaum was “enjoying any ... facility ... provided or administered by any State or subdivision thereof,”
The majority first goes astray, in my view, when it concludes that the meaning of the word “because” in
Because is defined in Webster‘s Third International Dictionary as a preposition3 as “by reason of: on account of.” Webster‘s Third International Dictionary 194 (14th ed. 1961). This I take to be the word‘s plain meaning and I therefore disagree with the majority‘s view that “the face of the Act is inescapably ambiguous....” I do, however, agree, as the majority points out, that “[w]hen confronted with a statute which is plain and unambiguous on its face, [a court] ordinarily do[es] not look to legislative history as a guide to its meaning.” (citations omitted).
There are significant consequences to applying the plain meaning of “because” to
Secondly, it avoids what to me seems an oddly anomalous (if not bizarre) characterization of the statute as containing “two distinct kinds of discriminatory attitudes with respect to the victim,” one being a motive and the other an intent, both
There is nothing whatsoever on the face of the statute which would suggest that the word “because” used in the phrase
(2) any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin and because he is or has been—....
was intended to convey two different concepts—motive in the first instance and intent in the second. Since the majority agrees that the first use of because connotes motive, see also United States v. Bledsoe, 728 F.2d 1094 (8th Cir. 1984) (finding first use of because connotes motive), it naturally follows that the second use does as well, there being nothing in the statute to suggest otherwise.
Furthermore, if one does look at the legislative history (which one need not and should not), the result is anything but clear. For starters there is the fact that the statute initially covered acts done “while” the person was using public facilities. S. Rep. 90-121 at 7 (1968), reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1837, 1844. The word “while” was removed in favor of “because,” resulting in a requirement that the government provide some evidence of motivation or as the Senate Committee on the Judiciary put it “a purpose to interfere with the activity.” Id. The majority‘s analysis effectively reamends the statute to remove the because and put the while back in by creating an ambiguity which does not exist and further creating two different meanings of because.
The majority does, of course, point to instances in the Senate report where the word “intent” rather than “motive” is used. The terms motive and intent are often used interchangeably and I would attribute the use of “intent” in the legislative history to less than rigorous attention to the distinction. In any event, the legislative history is at best ambiguous on the point and there is no reason to resort to it.
The majority suggests that the Circuit Courts in which the “dual intent requirement” has been considered “have adopted statutory constructions consistent with, if occasionally less specific than, the construction we adopt.” The cases cited by the majority appear to me equivocal at best, and perhaps even supportive of the interpretation of the dual use of “because” that I urge. See United States v. Woodlee, 136 F.3d 1399, 1405 (10th Cir. 1998) (addressing the only element of
The result of using the plain meaning of the word because is important to the disposition. While it may be appropriate for a jury to infer that in these circumstances the defendants intended to interfere with Rosenbaum‘s use of the public street, there is no evidence whatsoever from which a jury could conclude that the motivating force behind defendants’ actions was to prevent, deter, or even retaliate against the use of a public street. In fact, to the contrary, it is abundantly clear from the evidence that the motivating force for the actions taken was religion-based animus, pure and simple.
Our system of law gives great deference to conclusions drawn by juries. However, we do not permit juries to speculate in order to draw their conclusions. Radiation Dynamics, Inc. v. Goldmuntz, 464 F.2d 876, 887 (2d Cir. 1972) (“[I]t is the duty of the court to withdraw the case from the jury when the necessary inference is so tenuous that it rests merely upon speculation and conjecture.“) Given the complete absence of any evidence which would support an inference that the defendant Nelson, or the defendant Price, was impelled to act—motivated—by the fact that Rosenbaum was using the public street, the jury‘s conclusion to that effect was pure speculation. I would therefore reverse the judgment of the district court on that ground. In view of the fact, however, that this is a minority position, I wholeheartedly concur with the remainder of the majority‘s opinion, except as pointed out otherwise herein.
STRAUB, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority opinion in almost all respects, including the holdings that
The majority opinion vacates the conviction on the related grounds (1) that since Juror 108 was biased, the District Court should have granted the defendants’ for-cause challenge against him and (2) that the defendants’ subsequent agreement to seat Juror 108 did not waive their earlier objection. The defendants did not waive this objection, the majority holds, because jury impartiality is unwaivable once a for-cause challenge has been made and, even if it were waivable, the defendants’ acceptance of an improper jury selection plan would not constitute a valid waiver.
I. The Defendants Chose a Jury With Juror 108
Only an appreciation of the circuitous route which led to the empaneling of Juror 108 can lead to an understanding of why the defendants’ conviction should be left undisturbed. The defendants initially challenged for cause Juror 108, a Jewish man, based on his responses to individual voir dire, which indicated his sensitivity to Jewish concerns and his belief that nothing “definitive” came out of Nelson‘s state court trial. The District Court denied this challenge, and the defendants then requested that the District Court conduct further questioning of the juror. After some hesitation, the District Court ultimately agreed to conduct additional questioning of Juror 108 to ascertain the juror‘s ability to be impartial. The District Court told the juror “to look into your heart and ask yourself whether you feel personal emotional internal pressures that would make it such that you couldn‘t give the defendant here a fair trial.” The juror responded, “I don‘t know. I honestly don‘t know.”
As the majority opinion observes, our case law would normally require that this juror be excused. This is so because the juror, at least explicitly, never purged himself of the bias which he demonstrated during voir dire. But subsequent events leave little doubt that this was no normal case. Just prior to the start of trial, Juror number 108 was the fourth alternate and, depending on how things unfolded, may never have served as anything more than an alternate juror in the normal course of events. But Juror 108 became a full jury member not as a result of attrition as other members were excused, but because of an agreement among the prosecution, the defense, and the Judge.
Prior to swearing the jury, the District Court suggested that they substitute the second and fourth (Juror 108) alternate jurors for two regular jurors (one of whom was excused by the court for illness).1 Both the prosecution and defense agreed to the plan. Defense counsel conveyed on the record in open court that they had discussed the plan with their clients and had obtained their consent to this substitution:
The Court: Mr. Paster, do you want to put it on the record what you have discussed.
Mr. Paster: Yes, we have discussed matters that we have agreed upon this
morning with our client and he consents to proceeding.
Ms. Caproni: Could you state specifically on the record what has been agreed to?
Mr. Paster: Sure if I put on my glasses, that juror number 37 previously sitting in seat seven will become alternate number six, that juror 61 has been excused by the Court for illness, that juror number 94 has become juror number 11, that juror number 108 has, therefore, become juror number 12, that the order of the alternates shall be juror 93, 107, 11, 117, 122 and then juror number, 37 being the last alternate flat [sic].
The Court: Is that satisfactory. Mr. Price, is that satisfactory to you?
The Defendant Price: Yeah.
Mr. Headley: In addition to, Mr. Nelson, has overheard everything that Mr. Paster has said, in addition to that I informed Mr. Nelson that it would result in a jury where there would be three African Americans on the jury and two Jews on the jury, and you know Mr. Nelson has consented to that.
The Court: Is that acceptable, Mr. Nelson?
The Defendant Nelson: Yes, Your Honor.
The Court: I think we are ready to begin.
In other words, the Judge, the prosecution and, critically, the defendants preferred to proceed to trial with this jury—notwithstanding the fact that Juror 108 was a member. But for this agreement, Juror 108 would have likely remained an alternate juror.
Waiver is “ordinarily an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.” Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464 (1938). “When there is no constitutional or statutory mandate, and no public policy prohibiting, an accused may waive any privilege which he is given the right to enjoy.” Schick v. United States, 195 U.S. 65, 72 (1904); see United States v. Pachay, 711 F.2d 488, 495 (2d Cir. 1983) (Meskill, J., concurring in the result) (“Constitutional rights are guarantees, privileges secured to the individual, not directives of the sovereign mandating what is in the best interests of that individual. As such, those rights can usually be waived at the instance of the defendant.“). The inquiry of whether there has been an intelligent waiver of a particular right “must depend, in each case, upon the particular facts and circumstances surrounding that case, including the background, experience, and conduct of the accused.” Zerbst, 304 U.S. at 464.
Here, the facts of this case compel the conclusion that the defendants waived their opportunity to challenge the District Court‘s rejection of their cause challenge to Juror 108. I reach this conclusion not because the defendants failed to renew their challenge for cause after the District Court acceded to their request to conduct additional questioning of Juror 108, nor because they declined to exercise a peremptory challenge to strike Juror 108—although they in fact chose not to do both of these things. I would instead find waiver on account of the defendants’ consent to and participation in the plan that led to the substitution of Juror 108 onto the main jury.
In this regard, I agree with Justice Scalia, concurring in United States v. Martinez-Salazar, that “I would not find it easy to overturn a conviction where, to take an extreme example, a defendant had plenty of peremptories left but chose instead to allow to be placed upon the jury a person to whom he had registered an objection for cause, and whose presence he
In reaching this conclusion, I have considered the Supreme Court‘s warning against “sandbagging” on the part of defense lawyers” who may decline to object to a potentially unconstitutional trial procedure in order to manufacture reversible error. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 89 (1977). “[T]he underlying policy against permitting defense attorneys to create the errors of which they later complain remains the same regardless of whether the attorneys realized and appreciated the constitutional implications of the position they advocated.” United States v. Joshi, 896 F.2d 1303, 1307 n. 3 (11th Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Panchal v. United States, 498 U.S. 986 (1990). To find otherwise under the circumstances of this case would permit a defendant to manipulate the system and allow him to “test his fortunes with the first jury,” and assure him of a “second round in the event of a conviction.” McCrory v. Henderson, 82 F.3d 1243, 1247 (2d Cir. 1996) (defendant‘s failure to object to the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges prior to the conclusion of jury selection constituted a waiver of that objection).
The errors here are not properly categorized as structural, and therefore unwaivable, because they did not “so fundamentally undermine the fairness or the validity of the trial that they require voiding its result regardless of identifiable prejudice” and therefore, could not “fall within Fulminante‘s classification of structural errors.” Yarborough v. Keane, 101 F.3d 894, 897-98 (2d Cir. 1996) (citing Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309-10 (1991), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1217 (1997)). When one considers the overall circumstances and conditions of this trial, we can have overwhelming confidence in the fairness and validity of its verdict. Even if Juror 108 showed potential bias during voir dire, the presence of this one possibly biased juror did not fundamentally undermine the validity of the criminal trial. Our interest in fairness and accuracy was secured by the other protections afforded these defendants. This includes the presence of eleven other jury members, the strong guidance of the Judge‘s jury instructions and, above all, the defendants’ own ability to refuse to endorse and ratify the agreement by which Juror 108 took a seat on the jury. On the exceptional facts of this case, I cannot conclude that the presence of Juror 108 on the jury fundamentally undermined the validity and fairness of the defendants’ trial.
While the final jury may well have been chosen with race and religion in mind, it was a jury which all parties to the proceeding regarded as a better adjudicator of guilt and innocence than the alternative jury to be chosen by the strict dictates of
II. The Defendants’ Waiver Was Valid.
Nor do I accept the majority‘s technical argument that the defendants’ waiver was ineffective. The majority argues that since the waiver was premised on an improper exchange (both parties chose jurors on the basis of race and religion), we should not recognize the waiver. To my mind, we should deem the waiver ineffective only if our decision would further the public policy prohibiting the “improper exchange.” Although I agree that this highly unusual arrangement should not have been pursued by the defense or the government, let alone endorsed and encouraged by the District Court, I do not believe that vacatur provides a productive or sensible remedy in this case.
The remedy of ordering a new trial in response to race-based jury selection has found its most famous articulation in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). There, the state prosecutor used peremptory challenges to strike four black persons—the only black persons—on the venire. When the defendant objected, the trial judge ruled that the parties could use their challenges to “strike anybody they want to.” Id. at 83. When the Supreme Court remanded for possible vacatur and new trial, it offered three reasons why that misbehavior might require vacatur. First, the discriminatory conduct infringes a defendant‘s right to equal protection by denying him a jury of his peers. See id. at 86-87. Second, the discriminatory action injures the excluded juror by denying the person participation in jury service on account of his or her race. See id. at 87. Finally, the conduct harms the entire community by undermining public confidence in the fairness of the justice system. See id. at 87-88.
In light of the articulated injuries caused by the discriminatory jury selection, the Batson remand was a sensible outcome. The defendant, having been denied his equal protection, would be given his right to trial by jury chosen without racial prejudice. Moreover, the deterrent effect of such a remedy would serve to prevent the exclusion of future jurors based on race and, by eliminating this practice, restore and safeguard the public‘s confidence in the criminal justice system.
It seems to me that we should deem the waiver ineffective, and as a corollary require retrial, only when such a decision furthers one of these interests. But none of these reasons supports giving retroactive effect (i.e., voiding the defendants’ waiver) to the rule announced by the majority. In this case, unlike in Batson, the defendants themselves participated in and agreed to the plan that empaneled Juror 108. This forecloses any claim that they suffered injury, or at the very least estops them from asserting this claim. See Minetos v. City Univ. of N.Y., 925 F.Supp. 177, 185 (S.D.N.Y. 1996) (holding that “equity does not favor granting [the plaintiff] a new trial” on account of defendants’ Batson violation where the plaintiff herself
We are then left with the injuries to the excluded juror and to the community. For these purposes, a prospective rule against such behavior suffices, with no additional benefit to ordering retrial in this case. The excluded juror will not participate in a new trial. And the injury to the community‘s confidence in the system—if this practice is indeed widespread—can be averted by a prospective rule prohibiting this type of race and religion based jury selection.3
Therefore, I see no reason in law or public policy to view the defendants’ waiver as ineffective. Although we should discourage this type of behavior in the future, ensuring this systemic interest does not require deeming these defendants’ waiver ineffective. Neither judicial precedent nor public policy requires that the defendants receive compensation for an “injury” to which they not only acquiesced, but actually favored and desired. Insofar as the majority raises systemic concerns and wishes to ensure that district courts refrain from such jury practices in the future, a prospective warning would suffice.4
As I see it, requiring a retrial needlessly prolongs the pain of the community and families who were victimized by the defendants’ crimes. A retrial is neither deserved by the defendants nor required to safeguard the validity and fairness of our system of justice. The adoption of a prospective rule would not, as the majority suggests, operate to condone the District Court‘s choices. It would instead recognize that we should match our remedies to the injuries we seek to ameliorate. For all of the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent and would affirm the defendants’ convictions.
Helen DUNNIGAN, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
Docket No. 00-7399.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Argued Dec. 20, 2000.
Decided Jan. 9, 2002.
Notes
A similar doctrinal history establishes the analogous position with respect to the enforcement clause of the Fifteenth Amendment. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 324 (1966) (interpreting the enforcement clause of the Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use “any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition”).
It is true that several recent Supreme Court cases—including Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001); United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000); Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000); Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 527 U.S. 627 (1999); City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997)—have undertaken to limit Congress‘s enforcement authority under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to controlling conduct that directly violates the substantive provisions of Section One. But these cases do not refer to the Thirteenth Amendment context and hence cannot be read by us as applying to that context or as undermining the foundational principle that Congress‘s enforcement power under Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment extends well beyond the scope of the direct prohibitions contained in Section One.
There is, moreover, a crucial disanalogy between the Fourteenth and Thirteenth Amendments as regards the scope of the congressional enforcement powers these amendments, respectively, create. Whereas there is a long, well-established, doctrinally rich, and highly sophisticated tradition of judicial interpretation of the substantive protections established by Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment, the meaning of Section One of the Thirteenth Amendment has almost never been addressed directly by the courts, in the absence of specific congressional legislation enacted. Indeed, the Supreme Court has expressly referred to “the inherently legislative task of defining ‘involuntary servitude.’” Kozminski, 487 U.S. at 951, 108 S.Ct. 2751. And the task of defining “badges and incidents” of servitude is by necessity even more inherently legislative.
Not all attacks “because” a victim is black are, however, racially motivated in the relevant sense. Thus a racially indifferent attacker (one who gets his kicks from assaulting victims regardless of race) might nonetheless pursue exclusively black victims in the belief that the police will be less likely to seek out or prosecute those who commit violent acts against blacks. But we need not concern ourselves with whether
Our interpretation, which—at least for current purposes—treats “because” as imposing a requirement of class-based animus, is subtly but pervasively influenced by the fact that
Finally, we note that some members of Congress objected to the version of
The difference is important. An assailant who is paid to beat up a member of a racial or religious group by someone who is motivated by a desire to punish the victim for using a public facility is not himself or herself motivated by the desire to punish the victim‘s use of the facility (the motive is simply to get money) but would, nonetheless, have the intent needed to violate the law.
The Circuit Courts that have considered the dual requirement that appears throughout
The presence of these two (narrowing) requirements in
The legislative history of
We are mindful of the irony that attaches to applying the Thirteenth Amendment in this case. In doing so, we employ a constitutional provision enacted with the emancipation of black slaves in mind to uphold a criminal law as applied against black men who, the jury found, acted with racial motivations, but in circumstances in which they were, at least partly, responding to perceived discrimination against them. We make no effort to dissolve this irony, noting only that the post-Civil War amendments’ specific historical focus on black Americans and the amendments’ generally egalitarian language are all too often in tension. Cf. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 (1995); City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989); Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267 (1986); Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448 (1980); Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
Because we find that
The Supreme Court has recently expressed a great reluctance to allow the Commerce Clause to grant Congress powers to regulate activities that are not directly economic. See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 610-11, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (noting that “Lopez‘s review of Commerce Clause case law demonstrates that in those cases where we have sustained federal regulation of intrastate activity based upon the activity‘s substantial effects on interstate com-
Because we reject the defendants’ arguments in this connection and conclude that the street is a “facility” for purposes of
The defendants also cite, in this connection, the canon of statutory construction that says that statutes should be construed to avoid unconstitutionality, see Tunick v. Safir, 209 F.3d 67, 75 (2d Cir. 2000), and suggest that, in light of this canon, we should read “facility” as narrowly as possible, to exclude city streets, because to do otherwise would place the constitutionality of
The defendants also argue that reading “facility” as it is used in
Other courts that have considered the question directly have reached the same conclusion and done so with similar dispatch. See United States v. White, 846 F.2d 678, 695 n.27 (11th Cir. 1988) (reversing a district court‘s judgment of acquittal of conspiracy to violate
This interpretation of
The defendants suggest that this requirement of intent is essential to an upholding of the statute‘s constitutionality. This, they maintain, makes it more doubtful that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to establish that the defendants had the specific intent that they claim the statute must require. The defendants thereby present their challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence underlying their conviction under
In addition to concluding that the evidence of intent was sufficient to sustain the defendants’ convictions, we emphasize that in reaching this conclusion we do not view ourselves as acting under the specter of possible unconstitutionality. Instead, we reiterate that
The defense could perhaps be read to be saying that the charge was incorrect because by uniting the charge for category-based and activities-based intent and using language of intent in that charge, the court erred in stating what must be shown in order to demonstrate class-based motivation. To the extent that this is their argument, and to the extent the charge to the jury could be criticized for not specifying that category-based “because” required racial or religious animus or motivation any such error would be harmless. The evidence in this case established beyond peradventure that racial or religious animus or motivation existed.
Defendant Price—focusing on defendant Nelson‘s contention that his immediate motive for stabbing Rosenbaum was to free himself from Rosenbaum‘s grasp and thereby to escape apprehension by the police—also contends that the verdict should be reversed because there was insufficient evidence of class-based motive. This argument is frivolous. Nelson‘s immediate aim of escaping does not preclude his having had other forms of motive as well, and the trial produced overwhelming evidence of precisely such independent anti-Jewish animus.
We note that this is a case in which the naked inference identified in this instruction is at issue. The defendants do not claim that the jury improperly discounted countervailing evidence tending to show, specifically, that the defendants did not intend the ordinary consequences of their actions (for example, evidence that the defendants had planned to commit their attack away from the city street and attacked on the street only after their plan failed, or that they took other affirmative steps to diminish the association between their attack and the street). Instead, the defendants claim that the jury‘s inference is impermissible even where no evidence contradicts it.
We therefore find no merit in defendant Nelson‘s contention that in upholding the conviction against the defendants’ sufficiency challenge, we create a mandatory presumption that whenever an assault occurs on or near city streets, then the assault occurs because of the victim‘s use of the streets.
We of course reach this conclusion based on our own independent analysis, and not because we are compelled to follow the Report‘s reading.
In fact, the Price court went further, calling the defendant‘s sufficiency challenge “a frivolous contention.” Id. Oddly, it made this remark in the context of the trial court‘s instruction to the jury that “a person intends the natural and probable consequences of acts knowingly done or knowingly omitted.” Id. This jury instruction might be the presumption of intent instruction forbidden by Sandstrom rather than the permissive instruction that Francis allows. (Which side of the Sandstrom/Francis distinction this jury instruction falls on depends not on any particular form of words that the instruction uses, but rather on the sense conveyed by the jury charge as a whole and on whether a reasonable juror could read the charge as a whole as creating an unconstitutional presumption. See Payne, 825 F.2d at 707.) Price was decided before Sandstrom, of course, and Sandstrom, by affecting the correctness of the specific jury instruction at issue in Price, might alter the outcome of that case were it argued today. It does not, however, call into question the underlying principle employed by the court in
In addition, the district court made plain to the parties that peremptory challenges raised against the two Jewish prospective jurors in the group of 45 out of which the jury was ultimately chosen would be frowned upon. Thus the district court stated that “I‘m putting you right on notice that an attempt to get rid of the two Jewish jurors here, you are going to have to make an overwhelming showing,” and added that it would require any peremptory challenges raised against Jewish jurors to be accompanied by sworn affidavits from defense counsel. (Tr. 683-84). The defendants do not appeal directly on the basis of these statements, which therefore serve merely to provide background to the district court decisions that the defendants do appeal. (In spite of the remarks reported above, the district court ultimately did grant the defendants’ peremptory challenge against one Jewish juror.)
A second African-American juror, seated as Alternate Juror 3, was also excused (for hardship).
Although they opposed the district court‘s denial of their for-cause challenge to Juror 108, the defendants did not exercise a peremptory challenge against this juror.
The defendants had initially presented a fourth related argument on appeal, claiming that the district court had improperly denied them a peremptory challenge to Juror 108. The defendants withdrew this claim, however, after the government pointed out that they did not in fact seek to exercise a peremptory challenge against this juror.
Here, and subsequently, we refer to Juror 108 as a “biased juror.” This phrase connotes a juror‘s predisposition with respect a defendant‘s guilt or innocence which precludes the person from serving on a jury. We do not employ the term “bias” in its common use of an individual‘s racial prejudice or other form of intolerance.
In addition to actual bias, a for cause challenge to a juror may be grounded on “implied bias” and “inferable bias.” See id. Appellate review of district court decisions based on these grounds raises questions, and is governed by standards, that we need not address here.
Juror 108 did this, of course, by expressing his disappointment with Nelson‘s acquittal in State court.
Additionally, prospective application would fail, in our view, to address Judge Straub‘s appealing arguments about the undesirability of letting defendants benefit from the impropriety of a scheme in which they were full participants. The trouble with barring jurymandering in the future only, is that Judge Straub‘s arguments against reversal would be every bit as meritorious in a future case in which the parties and the judge agreed to jury selection based on race or religion. And if they were to be accepted then, as Judge Straub suggests that they should be now, the wrong that he agrees has occurred would be repeatable in perpetuity.
This, of course, might not occur if the court or the government had any proper expectations in this case that what was done was acceptable. But such a view is not sustainable. Apart from the existence of our dicta in Fay, 300 F.2d at 350-51, warning against jurymandering, the rules prohibiting officially created racial classifications unless they survive strict scrutiny are clear. See, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 224 (1995). Moreover, well before this opinion issued, both the court and the government gave unmistakable indications that they were aware of the likely impropriety of what had been done. The court did this when it suggested that the parties ought not broadcast the arrangement. And the government did so when it, admirably, suggested error in open court but asked for prospective application only. This, then, is not a case of “sandbagging” or surprise because of which it may be appropriate to apply a “new” rule in the future only. This is a situation in which, for motives that we do not at all question, the court together with the parties did something that they had good reasons to believe they should not do. Since the same circumstances may well occur again in the future, prospective application is apt to be chimerical and, hence, not suffice to safeguard society‘s fundamental interest in properly selected juries. It is also worth noting that insofar as the rule permitting waivers even of crucial constitutional rights is grounded in part on the concern that defendants may give themselves two chances at an acquittal by strategically passing over constitutional challenges at trial and raising them on appeal only if they lose, this worry is less pressing in cases in which the violations occur off the district court‘s own bat. When the court takes the lead in the proceedings, the opportunities for strategic manipulation by the parties are considerably diminished.
Judge Straub makes one further point that needs attention. He says in footnote 3 that “the evidence here proving guilt was powerful” and that “[w]e can have overwhelming confidence that these two [defendants] were [justly and fairly] convicted.” Op. Dissenting in part at 9 n.3. The issue is not quite so easy. In order for these federal convictions to stand there must not only be proof that the acts alleged in the indictment were done (as to which we readily concur that the evidence was strong), but there must also be proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the acts
Our holding in this respect was, necessarily, based on the strong reliance our system places on the findings of a properly selected and unbiased jury. Once it is conceded that the jury was not properly chosen, our confidence in the finding that the defendants’ intended to attack the victim because he was using a public facility (a finding which, we repeat, is a fundamental prerequisite of the federal crime that is here charged) is necessarily shaken. And, inevitably, so is the validity of the conviction. We fully share Judge Straub‘s distress at prolonging the pain of the community and the family of the victim. But we cannot affirm a conviction whose correctness has been put in doubt by the fact that a highly uncertain element of the crime was found to exist by a jury that was not chosen in accordance with the most basic precepts of our legal system.