Sicilian Culture: News: Italian-Americans Kept Off Mobster Jury

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Italian-Americans Kept Off Mobster Jury

To Richard Annotico,
This certainly sounds to me like a Batson violation. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 US 79 (1986), where the Supreme Court held that prosecutors may not exercise peremptory challenges to exclude prospective jurors based on their being of the same race as the defendant.
The Court later applied Batson in the reverse, i.e., to also preclude criminal defendants from using peremptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner. While the primary holding in Batson was intended to protect the rights of a defendant, the Court also recognized the rights of the jurors themselves, and noted that by denying a person participation in jury service on account of his race, the State unconstitutionally discriminates against the excluded juror. I believe Batson has also been extended to some civil cases.
The Batson decision cited Castaneda v. Partida, 430 US 482 (1977), as governing the determination of "cognizability" for equal protection objections to peremptory strikes during jury selection. In Castaneda, "cognizable' is defined as "a recognizable, distinct class, singled out for different treatment under the laws, as written or applied". Using this standard, a federal district court in Brooklyn held that Italian Americans constitute a cognizable racial group for Batson purposes. US v. Biaggi, 673 F. Supp. 96 (EDNY 1987). Although the Biaggi court accepted the government's "racially neutral" explanations for its challenges, it nevertheless held for the proposition that IA's do constitute a cognizable racial group for equal protection purposes.
In so doing, it cited the pre-Batson Supreme Court holding in Hernandez v. Texas, 347 US 475 (1954), that the ancestry-based exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries was unconstitutional, and where the court rejected the notion that only two "racial" groups, (white and black), are deserving of equal protection. Further, Biaggi has been cited with approval in US v. DiPasquale, 864 F.2d 271 (3rd Cir. 1988).
There is certainly authority for the proposition that IA's constitute a cognizable racial group for equal protection purposes under Batson, and, while the Supreme Court may not have specifically ruled on the issue of IA's in this context, I don't think its definition of race or ethnicity is as narrow as the Pennsylvania court apparently found it to be. There is certainly enough federal law for a colorable Batson claim in this case, and this decision sounds really bad to me. Of course, this is assuming that the newspaper article reported the facts accurately. I would be interested in reading the decision in the Rico case and the specific findings and reasoning of the court, and also, in knowing the reasons "unrelated to ethnicity" that were offered by the prosecutor for the challenges.
Joan Palermo

November 16, 2001 at 12:20:28 PST Italian-Americans Kept Off Mobster Jury
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge agreed with the state Supreme Court that prosecutors did not discriminate against Italian-Americans by excluding six of them from a reputed mobster's murder trial.
The ruling on Thursday said the defense's appeal failed to show a precedent for considering Italian-Americans a racial group. An attorney for defendant Joseph Rico, who was convicted, said Friday that he is appealing the decision.
In the ruling, U.S. District Judge William Yohn said prosecutors could use peremptory challenges to keep Italian-Americans off the jury in Rico's first-degree murder trial. Such challenges let attorneys remove jurors without stating a reason.
Rico himself has no Italian roots but changed his surname from Gavel to appear Italian so he could advance in the mob. The jury, which did include one Italian-American, convicted Rico in the 1983 death of a New Jersey drug dealer. The conviction was overturned in 1995 when a state appeals court said prosecutors violated Rico's rights by trying to exclude jurors who might sympathize with him because of their ethnicity. The conviction was reinstated in 1998 by the state Supreme Court, which said prosecutors challenged the potential jurors for reasons unrelated to their ethnicity. In Rico's appeal to the federal court, his attorney cited a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court case involving an effort to keep blacks off a jury in a case with a black defendant. Yohn refused to broaden the high court's definition of ethnicity, saying Rico's appeal "points to no other U.S. Supreme Court precedent that recognizes Italian-Americans as a cognizable racial group so it cannot be said that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania violated 'clearly established federal law.'" Rico is in prison serving a life sentence. --

From Manny Alfano:
Manny prefaces his post "Are We Italian Americans or Americans" with the comment: "If we had a doubt what we are, or what we should call ourselves ... the court has settled that argument"
While that is Very "Unsettling" to me, I am More Concerned that the Prosecutor and Judge INFERS and INTIMATES that Italian Americans are Pro Criminal, Pro Mob, and Pro Mafia, and therefore "unreliable" for Jury Duty.
Can someone advise Guiliani, Tonelli & Krase, that THIS is one of the BITTER FRUITS of "The Sopranos".
Would it be permissible to "exclude" Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, or Jews off Juries in which members of their ethnicity/race were being tried?
This seems to be a clear violation of the 14th Amendment, "Equal Protection Clause", and should be challenged.
I await the comments of other Attorneys.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge agreed with the state Supreme Court that prosecutors did not discriminate against Italian-Americans by excluding six of them from a reputed mobster's murder trial....

THE NIAF PROTESTS ETHNIC PROFILING IN JURY SELECTION
(WASHINGTON, DC - November 27, 2001) The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), an advocacy group in Washington, DC for Americans of Italian descent, strongly protests a recent federal court decision that allowed six Italian Americans to be excluded without cause from a Philadelphia murder trail of a defendant with an Italian last name.
On November 15, 2001, U.S. District Judge William Yohn agreed with the 1998 ruling of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that prosecutors in this murder trial did not discriminate against Italian Americans during the jury selection.
In the ruling, U.S. District Judge William Yohn said prosecutors could use absolute challenges to keep Italian Americans off the jury in the murder trial of Joseph Rico. Such challenges permit attorneys to remove jurors without stating a reason. Judge Yohn ruled that federal law was not violated because Italian Americans are not an identifiable racial group.
Ironically, the defendant, Joseph Rico, has no Italian roots but changed his surname from Gravel to appear Italian. He was convicted and is serving a life sentence.
"At a time of great sensitivity over profiling of any sort, it is troubling that one group was identified in the voir dire process and then excluded from the jury pool," said NIAF General Counsel Joseph V. DelRaso, a Philadelphia attorney with Pepper Hamilton LLP.
"This raises questions about the protection afforded U.S. citizens under our Constitution. I am sure that if appealed the court will give full and careful consideration to these issues," Del Raso said.
The NIAF is conferring with Italian American legal groups and societies about organizing an academic symposium on the issues of racial, ethnic and religious profiling in the jury selection process.
The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) is a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC and dedicated to preserving the heritage of Italian Americans. Visit our website at: www.niaf.org
Contact: Elissa Ruffino at 202/387-0600 or elissa@niaf.org

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