Supreme Court passes in corruption case

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Monday it would not review the public corruption conviction of a Los Angeles-area congresswoman's son, who argued that prosecutors put him on trial in a neighboring county to keep blacks off the jury.
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Roderick Keith McDonald, who is black, said he should have been tried in Los Angeles county instead of Orange county, where the jury pool is less than 2 percent African-American.

McDonald, a former municipal official in the Los Angeles area, was convicted in 2004 for his role in extortion schemes involving municipal contracts. His mother is Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles, which brought the criminal charges against McDonald, also is responsible for federal prosecutions in Orange County.

The court has never ruled whether a decision on where to hold a trial, if influenced by race, violates a defendant's constitutional due process rights, former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr argued in court papers on behalf of McDonald.

McDonald enlisted both Starr, who investigated
President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and former deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who served in the Clinton administration, to argue his case.
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The case is McDonald v. United States, 06-440.