## Facts

- Mattie Ruth Floyd, a Black woman suing as administratrix of the estate of Jason L.C. Floyd, filed a federal civil-rights action against Marty Garrison, a white police officer, alleging unlawful force in the shooting death of Jason Floyd.
- The case was tried in federal court using the district’s jury-selection plan, which drew prospective jurors from voter-registration lists.
- Before trial, Floyd moved to dissolve the jury pool because, out of 40 prospective jurors, only one was Black.
- The district court denied the motion, and the case proceeded to trial.
- The jury returned a verdict for Garrison.
- Floyd moved for a new trial, again arguing that limiting the jury source list to registered voters produced a venire that did not reflect a fair cross section of the community.
- The district court denied the new-trial motion.
- Floyd appealed, arguing that the voter-list-only jury plan violated (1) the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1861–1869, and (2) the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.

## Issues

1. Whether selecting federal juries solely from voter-registration lists violated the Jury Selection and Service Act’s fair-cross-section requirement where the venire included only one Black person out of forty.
2. Whether the same jury-selection method violated equal protection under the Fifth Amendment absent proof of purposeful racial discrimination in the jury-selection process.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit affirmed the judgment for Garrison.
- The court held Floyd failed to establish a prima facie violation of the Jury Selection and Service Act because she did not show that any underrepresentation of Black citizens resulted from systematic exclusion in the jury-selection process.
- The court rejected the Fifth Amendment equal protection claim because Floyd did not show intentional discrimination or a selection method that excluded jurors on the basis of race; the showing of disparity in this venire was not enough by itself.

## Legal Principles

- A fair-cross-section challenge under the Jury Selection and Service Act is assessed using the same three-part framework used for Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section claims: (1) the group is distinctive; (2) its representation in the jury pool is not fair and reasonable compared to its share of the community; and (3) the shortfall is due to systematic exclusion in the jury-selection process.
- Use of voter-registration lists as the source for jury pools is generally permissible under the Act; a challenger must show more than lower voter-registration rates among a racial group to prove a statutory violation.
- To prove an equal protection violation in jury selection, a challenger must show purposeful discrimination (or a race-based selection method) causing the underrepresentation; disparity alone, without proof of intent tied to the selection process, does not establish a constitutional violation.
- The burden of proof rests on the party challenging the jury-selection plan to present evidence connecting the underrepresentation to how jurors are selected, not merely to outside factors affecting who registers to vote.

## Conclusion

The Eighth Circuit upheld the district court’s refusal to dissolve the jury pool and to grant a new trial, concluding that a jury plan drawing names from voter-registration lists did not violate the Jury Selection and Service Act or the Fifth Amendment where the plaintiff showed only a small racial disparity in the venire and offered no proof that the jury-selection process itself caused that disparity through systematic exclusion or intentional discrimination.


Floyd v. Garrison, 996 F.2d 947 (1993)