People v. Black

Defendant Ronald E. Black was found guilty in the Contra Costa County Superior Court of two charges of robbery, and burglary and assault with a deadly weapon, in the perpetration of each of which crimes he had used a deadly weapon. He was also found guilty by the jury of possession of a sawed-off shotgun. He had previously five times been convicted of robbery, and once for burglary, second degree.

Proof of Black’s guilt of the charged offenses may reasonably be described as overwhelming.

Relying upon our decision in People v. Buford (1982) 132 Cal.App.3d 288 [ 182 Cal.Rptr. 904 ], defendant Black, a white man, contends only that he was denied “his constitutional right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.”

In Buford the defendant, a black man, had challenged the jury which later convicted him, “on the ground that blacks were underrepresented on that jury and on other juries of Contra Costa County, as a result of systematic *482 exclusion [of blacks] in the jury-selection process.” He did not “question the constitutional validity of the means by which the master list was compiled”; his grievance concerned only the remaining “stage of the process,…

Based upon the uncontroverted evidence submitted at the hearing on defendant’s motion challenging the venire, the following appears: Blacks comprised 8.1 percent of the voter-eligible population; of the 225 prospective jurors in the jury pool for the week involved, 5 to 8 (2.2 to 3.56 percent) were black; of the 35 jurors actually summoned for defendant’s trial, only 1 was black (2.86 percent). The parties stipulated that the procedures used by the jury commissioner in the summoning, excusing and deferring of prospective jurors were the same as reflected in People v. Buford (1982) 132 Cal.App.3d 288 [ 182 Cal.Rptr. 904 ]. However it was further shown that the number of prospective jurors excused and deferred (for a period up to 90 days) was considerably lower than that disclosed in Buford . Apart from the minor variance in the racial percentages of the summoned panels, the record is factually indistinguishable from that in People v. Jones (1984) 151 Cal.App.3d 1029 [ 199 Cal.Rptr. 185 ] (hg. den. Apr. 18, 1984) in which this court found no constitutional impediment. Accordingly, I concur in the result reached herein but again reiterate my reservation concerning the seemingly…

Defendant Ronald E. Black was found guilty in the Contra Costa County Superior Court of two charges of robbery, and burglary and assault with a deadly weapon, in the perpetration of each of which crimes he had used a deadly weapon. He was also found guilty by the jury of possession of a sawed-off shotgun. He had previously five times been convicted of robbery, and once for burglary, second degree.

Proof of Black's guilt of the charged offenses may reasonably be described as overwhelming.

(1) Relying upon our decision in People v. Buford (1982) 132 Cal. App.3d 288 [ 182 Cal. Rptr. 904 ], defendant Black, a white man, contends only that he was denied "his constitutional right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community."

In Buford the defendant, a black man, had challenged the jury which later convicted him, "on the ground that blacks were underrepresented on that jury and on other juries of Contra Costa County, as a result of systematic exclusion [of blacks] in the jury-selection process." He did not "question the constitutional validity of the means by which the master list was compiled"; his grievance concerned only the remaining "stage…