Public Corruption—Bill Campbell Trial’s Racial Composition

The federal criminal trial of Atlanta’s ex-mayor Bill Campbell is set to begin today.^[1] His trial is the “culmination of an investigation that dates to at least 1999 and that has already led to convictions of 10 people on charges including bribery, tax fraud and perjury.”^[2]

Mr. Campbell has been charged in a seven-count indictment which alleges “a wide-ranging operation directed by Mr. Campbell … to shake down companies trying to do business with the city.”^[3] The allegations include taking payoffs totaling more than $150,000, accepting more than $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions, filing false person income tax returns, and receiving gifts from contractors—a $12,000 Paris trip and roughly $10,000 in HVAC equipment for his residence.^[4]

Some of the 10 people who have been convicted, three of whom worked in Mr. Campbell’s administration, are expected to testify against him in situations that we have seen and discussed time and time again; potential witnesses received “lenient punishment” in exchange for their testimony.^[5]

Jury selection threatened to turn into a constitutional issue. Because Mr. Campbell is African-American, race has been a large factor of the discourse surrounding the trial.^[6] Judge Richard W. Story made a plea from the bench last Thursday “that the trial rely on law and evidence, ‘and not judge a man based on the color of his skin.’”^[7] The jury ultimately consists of seven African-Americans and five white people, and Judge Story made his remarks seemingly in reaction to “what seemed a pattern by both [the] defense and [the] prosecution of striking potential jurors based on race. Mr. Campbell’s team removed 10 potential jurors, all white, [while the] prosecution removed six, all but one of whom were black.”^[8]

Racial composition of the jury is a topic that receives enormous scrutiny in light of the 1986 US Supreme Court decision Batson v. Kentucky.^[9] Batson stood for the proposition that a State prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges to strike jury venire members of the Defendant’s race was subject to Equal Protection Clause considerations.^[10] This proposition was reaffirmed in the recent Supreme Court decision, Miller-El v. Dretke, which states that “[d]efendants are harmed…when racial discrimination in jury selection compromises the right of trial by impartial jury.”^[11] In Miller-El, the defendant successfully challenged Prosecutors when they struck 10 of 11 African-American jurors in a death penalty case.^[12] The stated reason was that those struck were anti-death penalty; however, the Prosecution’s description of the death penalty to white people was tame in comparison to the description given African-American venire panelists.^[13] In the end the Supreme Court ruled that that prosecutor’s strikes were racially determined, and it remanded the case “for entry of judgment for petitioner together with orders of appropriate relief.”^[14]

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[1] James Dao, With Heady Days in the Past, Ex-Atlanta Mayor Faces Trial, NY Times, Jan. 23, 2006.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
[10] Id. at 96-98.
[11] __ U.S. __, 125 S. Ct. 2317, 2323 (2005).
[12] Id. at 2325.
[13] Id. at 2326-32, 2333-36.
[14] Id. at 2340.