I am in the midst of my week of jury duty. I have been through Voir Dire twice. While I can generally follow the line of reason in each attorney’s questions, one defense attorney has stumped me. The case particulars, as much as I know them:
The charges were assault with a baseball bat and assault with a hand gun.
Both attorneys indicated that the defendant was a member of a street gang
The assault took place at in a convenience store parking lot
The defendant was a young, Hispanic male
The questions were routine ones concerning opinions on guns, racial predjudice, perceptions of gangs, etc. until the defense attorney launched into the following line of questioning for each juror:
Are you an active member of a church?
What church?
Do you hold any leadership position(s) in the church?
What are those positions, in detail?
Huh? The case had nothing to do with a church, didn’t happen at or near a church, didn’t have any religious undertones. Was this likely some jury consultant inspired line of questioning? Are active church members more likely to convict?
Sorry, I should clarify - I was not selected to sit on this jury, I don’t know anyone selected to sit on this jury and have no contact with anyone selected for this jury. I’m just curious.
Let’s see. My BIL is a police chief, my MIL works with INS, my FIL is retired Border Patrol, and I have previously served on a jury which returned a verdict in an assault case. Not excactly a criminal defense lawyers dream juror.
Questions about church membership I believe are standard voire dire questions in Minnesota. I think the attorney was trying to ferret out information about yourself, interests, etc. just another thing to chock up in the selection process.
I think the question is why such information is solicited in voir dire.
My WAG is that the defense at some point spoke with a jury consultant who advised him that churchgoers are less likely to convict. Perhaps he was gearing up for an argument or an appeal to religious faith (maybe the defendant is Catholic and the lawyer figures Catholics will be less likely to convict a fellow Catholic). Maybe the victim is gay and the lawyer thinks a religious person will excuse a gay-bashing more than a non-religious one will.
Actually as i typed the response I actually thought of reasons, for instance if you were involved in a church group, especially outreach or youth ministry I believe would have been highly telling in a case such as this…
My guess is that the assumption that members of a relatively conservative denomination are more predisposed to convict. Whereas members of a more liberal denomination or a non-church-goer would be assumed to be less predisposed to convict.
Hmmmm…Already we have two seemingly opposite opinions as to the possible disposition of a church-goer.
So I’ll throw my WAG in the ring - maybe the defense is planning to call the defendant’s local priest in as some kind of character witness and the attorney is simply trying to gauge whether such testimony would carry any weight with you.
Not really. Assuming arguendo that Catholicism is a “relatively conservative denomination,” that doesn’t rule out the idea that a member of that denomination, while otherwise more likely to convict someone outside the denomination, wouldn’t be less likely to convict someone within it.
I always ask questions like this in my civil cases…every lawyer has different reasons for asking certain types of questions in voir dire. For instance, I don’t like 1-12 teachers on my jury. My reasoning is sound (I’m not telling you why), but fairly often the reasoning is like reading tea leaves.
But, one obvious reason would be to find out if someone is on the ‘outer fringes’ of what could be considered ‘normal.’ I fyou get someone that speaks in tongues or handles snakes, you have someone you don’t want on your jury…
Under the law of most US jurisdictions, a party in a jury case is entitled to dismiss potential jurors on one of two bases, dismissal “for cause” and “peremptory” dismissal.
If there is a legal reason why a potential juror can not serve fairly and without bias, the court will dismiss the juror for cause. An unlimited number of number of potential jurors may be dismissed for cause.
In addition to for cause dismissal, each party is entitled to dismiss a limited number of jurors for any reason or no reason at all (except racial discrimination and possibly other types of discrimination are prohibited). The number of these “peremptory” dismissals permitted varies by jurisdiction and type of case.
In the voir dire questioning, the lawyers may be asking question to not only find out whether there is cause to dismiss them, but also to aid in their selection of who to make a peremptory dismissal.
As Jodi said, church membership and participation can be an indicator of general attitudes and tendencies and is a common question in voir dire, even when church or religious matters are uninvolved in the case.
Interestingly enough, on October 17th, in United States v. DeJesus, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that premptory challenges are allowed for the jurors’ possible strong religious participation.
I have a related question. I was once called for jury duty. I was not even called in for questioning. I wondered if this was because I said on my questionnaire that A. I read the newspaper every day or B. my husband (at the time) worked for a news radio network, or both? Is a daily newspaper reader someone that a lawyer doesn’t want on a jury?
