If Trump were to go on trial (for any of a number of viable charges), the jury would need to be vetted for hard-core Trump supporters who would screw up a unanimous “Guilty” verdict no matter what the evidence showed, so it would be vital to make sure you don’t have even one of them sitting on your jury. With that objective in mind, what sorts of questions would you ask prospective jurors in voir dire?
I’m not sure what the rules are on inquiring into someone’s actual voting habits, given the protection of one’s secret ballot, but what can be inquired in that specific area? More important, what questions would give away a Trump supporter who was trying his/her hardest tp conceal his/her abject idolatry of Donald Trump?
“Repeat the following sentence, please: Joe Biden is the duly and fairly elected President of the United States.”
I’m no lawyer, and I suspect that wouldn’t fly. But I think it would be an effective screen.
Remember the Happy Days episode when Fonzie was struggling with apologizing? “I’m S-s-s-s-s I’m S-s-s-s-s…”
Trump and his supporters are not known for their subtlety. So look for the juror who seems like a walking stereotype of the Trumpist conception of a liberal. Likely a trans, undocumented, Ivy League student majoring in critical race theory and wearing an Antifa t-shirt and pussy hat. And saying shit like, “Hello, my fellow liberals! Wouldn’t it be ‘woke’ if we could get on this jury and give that President Donald Trump what he’s got coming to him?”
Wouldn’t matter. They would lie. They learned from their mentor. Damned Dirty Liars. Geez, we got a Supreme Court Justice who perjured himself under oath. Do you think telling a fib or two to get on or off a jury is gonna be a thing?
Ok. My apologies to the OP for contributing to the direction this thread has taken. I think they are seeking good-faith answers re voir dire questions that could be posed to prospective jurors to determine fitness to serve. We’re headed into Pit territory, and that isn’t fair to the OP. Let’s try to stay on track – and that includes me.
A lot of voir dire questions that are allowed are designed to suss out a prospective juror’s leanings without directly asking about them. Some I remember:
What magazines do you subscribe to regularly?
What news channels do you watch regularly?
Do you have any bumper stickers on your vehicle? If yes, what do they say?
What are your hobbies?
Questions like these are permitted and the lawyers can learn a lot from them.
Most experience lawyers can tell who is telling the truth and who is trying to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge. The attorney I worked for started out as a court-appointed defender and it got to where she could tell in the first fifteen seconds if her client was lying. Later, when she transitioned to family law, she found this skill to be of great value, as FL cases often hinge on He-Said-She-Said. She passed on more than one potential client when they wouldn’t come clean during her initial consultation.
I’m fairly certain any federal prosecutor is going to do more than the standard due diligence during voir dire.
I considered my own answers to these questions, and I wonder if I or any other Doper would have a prayer of making it through voir dire and onto this hypothetical jury.
Oh, this was the tiniest sample of the types of questions they ask. In big cases, lawyers craft their questionnaires with great care. It’s a collaborative process between the attorneys and the judge and it takes awhile. Questionnaires I’ve worked with have been 20 pages long. For a case like Trump’s, I’ll bet the questionnaire would run even longer.
Based on your answers so far, you might be in the running for the final cut!
The questions I would want asked depend on whether voir dere is done by the judge or by the attorneys. If the judge is doing the questioning and my concern is weeding out right wing nutjobs, I like the above questions, ones about websites visited, and, more generally, the view of the prospective juror about the role of the government/law enforcement/courts. And always include questions about jury nullification. If its a particularly sensitive case, I ask the judge to ask prospective jurors individually if there is anything they’ve heard or experienced during jury service that they have questions or concerns about. Some prospective jurors aren’t shy when they’re sitting around waiting.
If the attorneys get to do the questioning, it’s much more important for me to build a positive relationship with the pitential jurors, so the questioning is much more informal. Bonding over pop culture (do any of you watch Law and Order regularly? True crime? What do you think about CSI type tv shows?) gives a lot of insight into people without creating suspicion or animosity.
Of course, there are also the standard voir dere questions about the duties of a jury. I always emphasizes that, if they become jurors, they are giving their solemn oath to decide the case based on the evidence.
I’m sure a case this high-profile will have jury consultants, and I bet they will review the social media histories of all prospective jurors.
Can be asked about how extensively they’ve followed the case, and if they’ve formed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant?
Yes, they might try to lie, but they’d get caught out if they’d posted, shared or liked pieces about Trump being railroaded ( or, on the other side of the equation, Trump being guilty).
And, in my experience, judges are really good at getting jurors to understand the importance of following the rules, and if there’s a juror that is refusing to consider the evidence and referring to information that wasn’t presented in court, their fellow jurors will rat them out and I’m sure the judge will take it seriously.
The jurisdiction is important, a Florida jury would be more concerning than a DC jury.
And a lot of people are really apolitical. I was with some family this weekend, they are younger and don’t watch TV, and they didn’t even know about the raid. And they are reliable voters, about half of American adults don’t even vote. I don’t think getting a fair jury is an impossible task.
Related anecdote - In Michael Connelly’s recent Lincoln Lawyer novel, the protagonist finds out that a prospective juror is a Trump supporter and he goes to great lengths to keep her from being seated, and he spends a lot of words talking about the close minded reality denial of Trump supporters and how it’s important for jurors to be able to distinguish truth from lies. It’s pretty scathing, and it’s even more scathing because the entire scene was totally and completely irrelevant to the plot of the novel - spoiler below.
I love Michael Connelly.
A bunch of stuff happens and the case never even goes to the jury.