United States v. Sneed’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 3 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘[Defendants ... may challenge only improprieties affecting the particular grand jury which indicted them.’ United States v. Bearden, 659 F.2d 590, 601 (5th Cir. Unit B 1981) (emphasis in original), cert denied sub nom. Northside Associates v. United States, 456 U.S. 936 , 102 S.Ct. 1993 , 72 L.Ed.2d 456 (1982). Thus to obtain relief from his conviction through an equal protection challenge to the selection of grand jury forepersons, a defendant must prove that unconstitutional discrimination affected the appointment of the foreperson serving on the grand jury that indicted him. See Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U.S. 545, 551 , 99 S.Ct. 2993, 2997 , 61 L.Ed.2d 739 (1979). Statistical analysis is simply a means of shouldering this burden, and the statistics employed must be tailored to that end. When the judges in a given unit do not select forepersons independently on the basis of individually established criteria, the decisions of all the group’s members may fairly be considered together because there is nothing to distinguish the selection process of one from that of any other: the judges’ decisions are, in essence, fungible. On the other hand, when a single judge makes foreperson appointments completely isolated from his colleagues and on the basis of separately developed criteria, the selections of other judges are simply irrelevant to the defendant’s claim of discrimination. In the latter situation there is no connection between the decisions of the one and the decisions of th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Lee v. State

2. “The first step is to establish that the group is one that is a recognizable, distinct class____ Next the degree of underrepresentation must be proved, by comparing the proportion of the group in the total population to the proportion called to serve as ... jurors, over a significant period of time---- Finally, ... a selection procedure that is susceptible of abuse or is not racially neutral supports the presumption of discrimination raised by the statistical showing.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bowen v. Kemp