## Facts

- James Barber was convicted in Massachusetts state court on drug-related charges, including unlawful possession of controlled substances and a hypodermic syringe.
- Before trial, Barber moved to dismiss the jury venire, arguing that “young adults” were substantially underrepresented in the jury pool.
- Barber defined “young adults” as persons ages 18 to 34.
- Barber offered statistical proof to show the disparity, asserting that young adults made up nearly 38% of the county population but appeared in venires at a materially lower rate (roughly half of their population share).
- Barber did not claim intentional discrimination against young adults; he argued the Sixth Amendment requires jury venires to be drawn from a fair cross-section of the community and that the disparity showed a constitutional defect.
- After his conviction and exhaustion of state remedies, Barber filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court, raising the same Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section claim; the district court denied relief.
- A First Circuit panel reversed, concluding that young adults were sufficiently cohesive to qualify as a group that must be adequately represented in venires.
- The First Circuit granted rehearing en banc to reconsider whether young adults (ages 18–34) qualify as a “distinctive” group for Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section analysis.

## Issues

1. Whether persons ages 18–34 constitute a “distinctive” (or cognizable) group for purposes of the Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section requirement.
2. If not, whether Barber could establish a prima facie fair-cross-section violation based only on statistical disparity evidence and obtain federal habeas relief.

## Decision

- The First Circuit, sitting en banc, held that “young adults” ages 18–34 are not a sufficiently defined and cohesive group to qualify as “distinctive” for Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section claims.
- Because Barber failed the threshold “distinctive group” requirement, the court did not award relief based on the asserted disparity in venire composition.
- The en banc court affirmed the district court’s denial of Barber’s habeas petition, displacing the earlier panel ruling.

## Legal Principles

- A Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section claim is evaluated under *Duren v. Missouri*: (1) the excluded group must be “distinctive” in the community, (2) the group’s representation in venires must be unfair and unreasonable in relation to its share of the community, and (3) the underrepresentation must be due to systematic exclusion in the jury-selection process.
- For the first *Duren* element, courts commonly ask whether the proposed group (1) is defined and limited, (2) shares a basic similarity in attitudes, ideas, or experiences, and (3) has a community interest such that its exclusion risks juries that are not representative.
- Broad age ranges may fail the “distinctive group” requirement because age is a continuum and large age brackets can join together people at materially different life stages, making it difficult to treat the category as cohesive in a constitutionally meaningful way.
- The fair-cross-section requirement does not guarantee that every venire (or every jury) will match community demographics with mathematical precision; it prohibits the systematic exclusion of qualifying distinctive groups.
- Statistical disparity, without more, does not establish a Sixth Amendment violation where the challenged category is not a qualifying distinctive group and where the proof does not connect the disparity to the operation of the jury-selection process in a way that satisfies *Duren*.
- An en banc court may reconsider and reject earlier circuit treatment that recognized a broad age cohort as cognizable when, in the en banc court’s view, the governing standards for “distinctive” groups are not met.

## Conclusion

The en banc First Circuit denied Barber’s Sixth Amendment challenge to his venire, ruling that persons ages 18–34 are not a “distinctive” group for fair-cross-section purposes; accordingly, the court affirmed the federal district court’s denial of habeas corpus relief despite Barber’s statistical showing of underrepresentation.


Barber v. Ponte, 772 F.2d 996 (1985)