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

• Author: Nina W. Chernoff
• Position: Associate Professor, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law
• Pages: 1719-1785

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No Records, No Right: Discovery & the

Fair Cross-Section Guarantee

Nina W. Chernoff

ABSTRACT: Every criminal defendant has the right to a jury selected from a

“fair cross-section” of the community—a pool of people reflecting the

community’s racial and ethnic makeup. Yet there is substantial evidence that

juries in state courts across the country do not reflect a fair cross-section of

their communities, in violation of the Sixth Amendment and federal and state

statutes. This Article exposes and analyzes one cause of racially

unrepresentative juries: state courts’ failure to grant criminal defendants

access to jury selection records.

Jury selection records are critical because fair cross-section violations are

frequently hidden from view. For example, a computer error caused the federal

jury selection system in Connecticut to read the “d” in Hartford to mean

“deceased,” and accordingly failed to call anyone from Hartford for jury

service. This hidden error eliminated 63% of eligible African-Americans from

the jury system and thereby produced a racially unrepresentative jury pool in

violation of the fair cross-section guarantee. The flaw went undetected until

a federal defendant obtained access to jury records under federal law. Yet

under Connecticut law, a state defendant in that district would be prohibited

from accessing the records that revealed the error. As a result of state laws like

Connecticut’s, defendants are often denied access to the information they need

to discover violations of the fair cross-section right.

This Article provides the first scholarship analyzing the role of access to records

in constitutional and statutory fair cross-section doctrine. It reveals the way

in which the celebrated constitutional and statutory right to an impartial jury

 Associate Professor, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. I am grateful

for the research assistance and thoughtful contributions of Joseph Schofield, Kelly M.

Burnett, and Michael Wynn, and for the insights of Ruthann Robson and Mark Raymond

Sylvester. I also benefited from the feedback of Erin Collins, Miriam Baer, and Anders Kaye at

the A.B.A. Criminal Justice Section Faculty Workshop; Kim Thomas, Amber Baylor, Vida Johnson,

and Richard Frankel at the New York University Law School Clinical Law Review Writers’

Workshop; Samantha Buckingham, Cortney Lollar, and Andrew Ferguson at the PDS in the Legal

Academy Symposium; and the attendees of the James T. Gathii Faculty Workshop Series at Albany

Law School and the CUNY Law scholarship workshop. I welcome all feedback and can be reached

at nina.chernoff@law.cuny.edu.

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1720 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 101:1719

depends entirely on the ostensibly minor decision to grant or deny criminal

defendants access to jury selection records.

This Article begins by illustrating why fair cross-section violations are both

invisible and harmful, and describes how federal law has responded by

guaranteeing federal defendants a right to discovery. It uses an original 50-

state survey to reveal that, in contrast to the federal system, the majority of

states keep the door to the fair cross-section right locked by denying defendants

access to the discovery key. In fact, 39 of the 50 states fail to provide access to

the one set of records that defendants must have in order to enforce the right.

This Article analyzes and critiques state court doctrine that elevates

administrative concerns over the fair cross-section right, and concludes by

proposing solutions that could accommodate courts’ concerns without

jeopardizing the fair cross-section guarantee.

I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1722

II. THE CONTEXT: A UNIQUE PROTECTION, AN INVISIBLE VIOLATION,

AND A REAL HARM ...................................................................... 1725

A. DISCRIMINATION IS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE FAIR-CROSS

SECTION AND EQUAL PROTECTION GUARANTEES ................... 1725

B. A FAIR CROSS-SECTION VIOLATION IS INVISIBLE AND THUS LEAVES

DEFENDANTS DEPENDENT ON THE GOVERNMENT ................... 1726

1. AN INVISIBLE VIOLATION ............................................ 1726

2. DEFENDANTS ARE DEPENDENT ON THE

GOVERNMENT ............................................................. 1733

C. A FAIR CROSS-SECTION VIOLATION CAUSES REAL HARM ....... 1736

1. The Purpose of the Jury Is to Reflect Community’s

Judgment ................................................................... 1736

2. Racially Unrepresentative Juries Fail to Reflect a

Community’s Judgment ........................................... 1738

3. Government Interest in Racially Representative

Juries .......................................................................... 1745

4. American Juries May Not Be Racially

Representative ........................................................... 1748

III. THE FAIR CROSS-SECTION RIGHT IN FEDERAL COURTS: AN EXPLICIT

RIGHT TO DISCOVERY ................................................................. 1749

A. THE JSSA: PURPOSE AND PLAIN LANGUAGE PROTECT THE FAIR

CROSS-SECTION RIGHT AND PROVIDE ACCESS TO JURY

RECORDS ............................................................................. 1750

1. The Purpose of the JSSA Is to Protect the Fair

Cross-Section Right ......................................................... 1750

2. Plain Language of the JSSA Provides Access to Jury

2016] NO RECORDS, NO RIGHT 1721

Records ...................................................................... 1750

B. SUPREME COURT RECOGNIZES ENTITLEMENT TO JURY

RECORDS ............................................................................. 1752

1. Supreme Court Relies on JSSA’s Purpose and Plain

Language in Granting Access to Records ............... 1752

2. Lower Federal Courts Recognize that JSSA’s Purpose

Requires Access to Records ...................................... 1753

IV. THE FAIR CROSS-SECTION RIGHT IN STATE COURTS: INSUFFICIENT

ACCESS TO RECORDS ................................................................... 1755

A. STATE STATUTES: INADEQUATE PROTECTION FOR FAIR CROSS-

SECTION RIGHT ................................................................... 1756

B. STATE COURTS: IMPOSING BURDEN OF PROOF IN ABSENCE OF

STATUTORY ENTITLEMENT TO DISCOVERY ............................ 1757

V. STATE COURTS ERR IN IMPOSING BURDEN OF PROOF: CROSS-

SECTION PURPOSE DEMANDS DISCOVERY ................................... 1760

A. FAIR CROSS-SECTION PURPOSE OF STATE STATUTES MANDATES

DISCOVERY .......................................................................... 1760

B. FAIR CROSS-SECTION PURPOSE OF STATE OR FEDERAL

CONSTITUTION MANDATES DISCOVERY ................................. 1763

VI. ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE OF STATE COURTS’ RATIONALES FOR

DENYING ACCESS ......................................................................... 1764

A. COURTS MAY DENY DISCOVERY BASED ON LEGITIMATE CONCERNS

THAT ARE NOT ACTUALLY THREATENED BY DEFENDANTS’

DISCOVERY REQUESTS .......................................................... 1765

1. Concerns About Protecting the Privacy of the Jury Are

Legitimate, but Not Threatened by Discovery ........ 1765

2. Concerns for Judicial Efficiency and Administrative

Burdens Are Legitimate, but Not Threatened by

Discovery .................................................................... 1767

3. Concerns About the Scope of Remedies Are

Legitimate, but Not Threatened by Discovery ........ 1769

B. COURTS MAY DENY DISCOVERY BASED ON A MISUNDERSTANDING

OF THE LAW ........................................................................ 1770

1. Confusing the Discovery Stage with the Merits

Stage ........................................................................... 1771

2. Confusing Fair Cross-Section with Equal

Protection .................................................................. 1771

3. Discomfort with a Burdenless Request and Distrust of

Defense Motives .............................................1772

C. INADEQUATE ADVOCACY MAY CONTRIBUTE TO ERRONEOUS

DISCOVERY DENIALS BY COURTS ..................................1773