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State v. Kennedy6/26/2002
WRIT OF REVIEW GRANTED; RELIEF DENIED
Patrick Kennedy, defendant/relator, seeks this court's supervisory review of the trial court's denial of his Motion to Quash Indictment. The trial court found that while Kennedy made out a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination against women in the selection of grand jury forepersons over a 10 year period in Jefferson Parish, the State rebutted the case by showing racial and gender neutral selection criteria. We granted this writ application to review this important issue. After considering defendant's arguments, the State's opposition, the transcript of the hearing, and the introduced statistical and expert testimony, we affirm the trial court's denial of the Motion to Quash, but on different grounds. We find that under current applicable law, the defendant did not show a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination against women in the grand jury foreperson selection process.
Relator, an African-American male, was indicted on May 7, 1998 for capital aggravated rape of a female under the age of 12 allegedly occurring on March 2, 1998, in violation of LSA-R.S. 14:42. Defendant filed a Motion to Quash the indictment on the basis of race and gender discrimination in violation of defendant's rights to due process, equal protection, and the right to be indicted by a grand jury that represented a fair cross section of society. He specifically asserted that the foreperson of the grand jury that indicted him was a white male; the procedure for selecting grand jury forepersons was susceptible to abuse; there was intentional, discriminatory, and systematic exclusion of African-Americans from the position of foreperson on the grand jury that indicted defendant; the parish has a history and pattern of intentional, discriminatory, and systematic exclusion of African-Americans from the position of grand jury foreperson; the trial judges chose to appoint a white male as foreperson; and, there is both race and gender discrimination in the selection of the grand jury foreperson. Defendant claimed that Louisiana's selection process for grand jury foreperson violated defendant's constitutional rights to due process, equal protection, and the right to be indicted by a grand jury made up of a fair cross-section of the community.
A hearing was held on January 14, 2002. At the hearing, the relevant time period to be examined was set by the court as the roughly 10-year period preceding the defendant's indictment, starting May 24, 1988 and ending September 10, 1998, the year in which the defendant was indicted. The defendant presented data (Tables D-1, 2 and 3, not included in defendant's Writ Application, but supplied by the State in its Opposition thereto) representing the race and gender of each grand jury foreperson selected during that time period (and a greater 19 year time period, from 1979 until 1988) and the race and gender of the judge who selected the grand jury foreperson. The State stipulated to the authenticity of the data, though not to the interpretation of that data by the defendant's expert, Dr. Joel Devine. At closing argument, the defense stated that the composition of the grand jury itself was not at issue, because it was randomly selected. Defense counsel also conceded that the evidence did not show discrimination against African-Americans as grand jury forepersons during the 10-year time period, but did show discrimination against women as grand jury forepersons.
During the 10-year time period considered by the trial court, there were 19 grand juries empaneled and 19 grand jury forepersons selected by the judges of the 24th Judicial District Court of Jefferson Parish. Ten forepersons were white males; six were white female
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