I had my second run-in with jury duty this month. The case involved some sort of shaken baby syndrome or something similar. The prosecutor eliminated about 2 jurors, why, I couldn’t figure. The defense attorney eliminated about 5 (maybe more, I don’t know if he asked any to leave after me). I suspect he wanted to get anyone off the jury who have education or training in medicine (among the others asked to leave were an RN, a medical student, and a person who had worked in hospitals.
Perhaps this is a vague question, but what do you consider when choosing jury members?
I’ve heard things about eliminating the ones who are well-educated or well-read, but I don’t know if I believe it.
I read a book “Justice overuled” by some well known judge were he talks alot about the problems of selecting juries. Lawers get some number of jurors they can kick out for any reason but after that they would need to prove that the juror is biased in some way. The number of questions a lawer can ask is limited by the judge or the judge can ask the questions themselves. I guess you can read the book yourself i dont want to say too much sinse i am not a lawyer and dont have experience in this kinda stuff.
I have done trials, but never jury trials. A prosecutor I know says he just goes with what he is given. I can’t help more than that, sorry.
When Mrs. Tonk has done over 200 trials that have reached a jury verdict. Most of them were from her years as a prosecutor.
The way it works - briefly - is that each side gets to question the prospective jurors to ascertain their suitability, and if a jury candidate can be shown to have bias or otherwise be unsuitable, that candidate is dismissed. In addition, each counsel has a few “pre-empts” with which they can dismiss a candidate for any reason or no reason at all.
As a prosecutor, she tried to minimize women on jurys. She says that women tend to be a lot more wishy-washy and unable to make up their minds regarding guilty/not guilty, while men tend to make decisions much more quickly and stick with it. Mind you, this isn’t meant to portray women as incapable of being effective jurors, just that it’s agonizing for all parties involved to hang around while the jury takes the better part of two days deliberating a shoplifting case.
The other people she tried to eliminate are very attractive people, both men and women. She says they often end up being a distraction for the other jurors, the other attorney, the judge, and sometimes even her. Many times she’s told me about having to use pre-empts to get rid of some woman who was absolutely stunning. Or some guy with great hair and a nice ass.
Now she does criminal defense but I assume the same holds true. I’ll ask her and post again.
Here is a thread I started a couple of seeks ago in IMHO asking basically the same thing.
The Judge asked a lot of broad questions like “has anybody ever filed a personal injury lawsuit, of had one filed against them … Does anybody have any relatives that have ever filed a…” and so on. I didn’t have one single affirmative response in the whole list of maybe 50 questions.
Council walked over to us and looked us all up & down and made scribbles on a legal (of course!) pad. I guess they just didn’t like our looks, some of us.
One thing’s for sure: I’ll never sit on a jury. Lawyers hate having other lawyers on the jury; they think we’ll critique them. And we would, too!
If you go to a nearby law library, and find the section on “trial advocacy,” you’ll see many books on how to pick juries, filled with interesting (but somewhat unscientific) ideas.
For example, one book suggested that criminal defense attorneys should eliminate teachers from the jury, since teachers have heard every excuse and frequently “convict” and punish misbehaving students depite their protestations of innocense.
I think that most lawyers who pick juries on a regular basis have certain rules of thumb that they follow, such as those mentioned by honkytonkwillie.
Where it gets interesting though, is on big-time “spare no expense” jury trials. In such situations, one or both parties may conduct “jury research exercises.” These are similar to so-called “focus groups.” The participants are recruited from the community which constitutes the jury pool for the trial, and they fill out extensive questionnaires. The case is presented to these people in an abbreviated fashion, and the people fill out more questionnaires about their feelings on the case. Then they “deliberate” while the lawyers watch behind one-way glass. Everything is analyzed very carefully, and the consultants decide what types of jurors will be most favorable - rich or poor, old or young, etc. They also decide what arguments and evidence play best with various jurors.
It’s a fascinating experience, although it basically confirms common sense.
One last point: In a sense, jury selection (in civil cases) begins long before trial, since many communities have jury pools that are especially good for plaintiffs (or defendants). Plaintiffs lawyers frequently try very hard to venue cases in certain counties.
One note: many of you have said something along the lines of, “…each counsel has a few “pre-empts” with which they can dismiss a candidate for any reason or no reason at all.”
This is a good breif description, to be sure. but it’s nopt completely accurate. Even the preemptory challenges must not be based on an impermissible reason, such as race. If a defense attorney feels, for example, that a prosecutor is using all his strikes to remove members of a certain race from the jury pool, he may object. The judge will then listen to the specific reasons for the objection. If he feels the defense has raised a prima facie case of racial bias, the burden then shifts to the CA to provide a race-neutral explanation for each dismissal.
Failure of the judge to conduct such an examination after a timely objection is reversible error - see Batson v. Kentucky.
My own reaction on jury selection: every dream juror for your side will be kicked off by a challenge from the CA. Every dream juror for the prosecution would get kicked by one of my challenges. The result pretty much always ended up being a fair cross-section of the people available for jury duty.
- Rick
For no reason, I’m just going to assume that this is why I was excused. 
Bricker, if I could ask, what makes someone a dream juror?
As an aside, I’m pretty glad I wasn’t asked to stay, I didn’t really have 3 weeks to spare for the trial!
IAAL. Plaintiff’s personal-injury work, mostly, in Texas.
As stated earlier it is not that you “pick” a jury so much as the first twelve are put in the box who aren’t struck “for cause” (when the Judge agrees that they are unsuitable for the case due to some relationship with one of the parties or a strong “bias or prejudice” for one side or regarding one issue). In TX then each side gets six “preemptory strikes” (we just call them “cuts”). As stated earlier, using them on the basis of race or gender or ethnicity is a no-no although the reality is that it’s difficult to catch someone doing it.
So the question then becomes: who do I want to get rid of? You start with general principles: Blue collar is good. I don’t want a business owner who (generally) has a dim view of lawyers and lawsuits. In general (and this is a very general generality) I will cut jurors who are part of (or believe in) the Establishment. They tend to think that s— happens (for the same reason, ironically, motorcycle riders are also tough on Plaintiffs in my opinion) and that a person should be able to succeed (as they, the prospective juror, did) in life without the “help” of a lawsuit and jury award. Joe Six-Pack understands that in the workplace the safety rules on paper are sometimes bent to get production up. The banker with the first-class insurance plan doesn’t understand that you can be in pain and yet not go to your doctor every time it flares up.
Also bad (for me) – teachers and accountant-types: always overanalyzing things to the point that you have to really prove everything to them, beyond the tried-and-true definition of “preponderance of the evidence”. (Of course, my brethren on the other side of the case will say that my blue collar guys just underanalyze things to the point of finding liability where it is not proven . . .)
And then a lot of it is just a feel. Body languauge. A particular answer. That “Rush is Right” T-Shirt. Right or wrong, no honest lawyer is going to tell you that he doesn’t take race into account if the Plaintiff and Defendnat are of different races. There are a million variables and yet usually at least 4 of the 6 cuts (and sometimes all 6) are no-brainers.
I could explain at length but as I type this out I realize that it’s more of an art than a science and that every case is going to call for a slightly different approach.
If you have a more specific question, go ahead.
In my State, civil trials are before a jury of eight. You get a jury pool of maybe 25 or 30 citizens of whom 16 are selected by lot to be in the panel. These are the people the lawyers question. As it emerges that one of the 16 is an unsuitable for one reason or another (too deaf to hear the witness, defendant’s second cousin, knows the plaintiff and hates him, thinks all physicians are prostitutes, works for a auto liability insurance company, etc.) the judge will excuse him “for cause” and replace him with someone else drawn by lot from the remaining pool. Once there are 16 people on the panel who do not have any glaring reason they should not be jurors, the panel is passed for cause. At this point, in my State, each side gets to take turns throwing anyone they want off the panel for any reason, or no reason, until each side has peremptorily challenged four panel members, leaving the eight who will try the case. This is a blatant oversimplification that assumes one plaintiff and one defendant. If there are multiple parties with different claims against each other and among themselves the whole thing gets pretty complicated.
Regarding how you decide who to challenge, usually there are two or three people among the 16 that you would really like to have on the jury. These people are bright, well informed, attentive and right minded and might well be inclined to favor your client. You may be assured that you opponent will challenge every one of them. On the other hand, there are also three or four brutish, bloody-minded and not real bright guys that you just have to get rid of, so you do. That’s the way it works, you get rid of people that for some reason you think are inclined to disfavor your cause or overly favor the other guy’s cause. The other guy does the same thing. What is left is eight people who both sides can live with. When it comes down to the last challenge and the people you just can’t put up with are gone and you are pretty well happy with every one who is left but you still have to exercise the last challenge, some times you turn to your client and ask who it is he doesn’t like the looks of. No one, of course, leaves an engineer on the jury.
Pure joy is when your adversary challenges a panelist you were about to challenge. That’s like a Get Out of Jail Free card.
My roommate has heard that “no engineer” rule from a trial lawyer. What’s the basis for it?
I’ve only been called for jury duty once. A personal injury suit, a back surgery patient suing the surgeon and the hospital. I’m not going to hijack the thread by spelling out the details, but if the trial played out like the brief explanations given by the lawyers implied then that guy was a complete idiot. Unfortunately, his lawyer was by far the most concise and clear. I’ve heard the lawyer wins the case far more often than the facts do.
Luckily, (it was probably going to be a two-week trial) I have friends and family in the medical industry, so I was apparently ruled out pretty quickly by the plaintiff’s lawyer. I’ve also read that the best way to get out of jury duty is to answer questions clearly and confidently.
Intellgence is probably the LOWEST priority when selecting a jury. I base this statement (and it’s my own, so I guess I need an IMHO here) on an official state of Washington class I took when I worked at a Juvenile Rehab Group home about five years ago. The class was ‘Report Writing’(which was mostly fo police officers, detention officers and people like me - counselors at group homes and halfway houses), and it stressed that we needed to dumb down our reports to the 6th grade reading level. Why? Because the state had found that was the AVERAGE reading level of a jurist, so we were to write reports assuming that they would eventually be seen by a jury.
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For a plaintiff’s lawyer the “no engineer” rule is based on the fact that engineers are usually very analytical, low on the emotion/empathy scale, believe in (and are a product of) the system, and sometimes have a difficult time understanding how the real world works in the industrial setting where most claims come from. (Sorry to have offended any engineers out there). I would think that a civil defense/insurance lawyer would love them. They get cut by the Plaintiffs’ attorneys in the same way that the Criminal District Attorney is going to get rid of philosophy professors.
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There is a fair degree of truth to that. Going back to my prior post, us lawyers are looking at who to cut – who we are worried will be against us and a leader. If you speak up you show yourself to be a potential leader and then its just a question of whether you say something that’s going to get someone nervous. If you just sit there and fly under the radar it’s less likely that you’re going to attract the attention of either side and although they may not have a good feeling about you they will run out of cuts before they get to you.
NB – Different states cut jurors in different ways. Down here the challenges for cause are in front of the other attorney but the preemptory strikes are handed to the court clerk secretly by both sides, i.e. you don’t know what the other side is going to do (although you generally have a decent idea). When “double strikes” occur as they sometimes do – both sides cut the same person – it raises some eyebrows.
For criminal defense, someone who indicates they have a family member behind bars or someone who’s been arrested previously is almost always a good bet. Someone who’s edged close to being kicked for cause but stayed on the line:
Q: “Do you believe police officers always tell the truth?”
A: “No, I think they lie sometimes, just like anyone else - maybe even more, a lot of the time.”
Q: “Can you put aside any feelings about poilce officers lying as a general rule, and judge the testimony and evidence in this case fairly, and without any preconceived notions?”
A: “Oh, yes. I can.”
It all depends on the judge – but that voir dire isn’t likely to result in removal for cause… but that is a dream defense juror. It’s equally obvious that no prosecutor worth anything would allow that juror to remain.
Of course, if the accused is a police officer, then that voir dire has uncovered a dream prosecution juror.
- Rick
This is very interesting. I’ve been called for jury duty several times, but I was overseas in the military, which is an automatic exemption. My number has come up since then, but haven’t been ‘picked’; as I’m a technical person.
What’s wrong with having a nice, large pool of eligible jurors and peeling off the first 12 in random order and say “Here ya go, folks” and call it good?
Sounds fair to me. Disqualifying “smart” people just sounds wacky to me.
The theory of having strikes, etc. is that by taking out the more extreme people (on both sides) you end up with a jury which is more like the average cross-section of society (a “jury of one’s peers”, etc.). Kinda like how they do in the Olympics when they ignore one high and one low score from the judges.
One time I got called for jury duty and placed on a large panel (80, IIRC). The case seemed to be a car jacking with a child in the car (judging by the charges). The interesting thing was that the panel member sitting next to me was a professional-looking woman in a tailored outfit who turned out to be an assistant DA. She was right before me, and my initial thought was “Oh great, they get down to her, I’m on this thing”. We were way down the list, and they didn’t get to us.
The interesting thing was, she gave me a running “play by play” commentary on the jury interviews, and which jurors would be retained. All very subjective when they can’t dismiss for cause. A couple stick in my mind.
I think one way to get off a jury may be to be an asshole. There was one guy on that panel who came off like an argumentative prick, just while being interviewed - never answering the lawyers questions without editorial comment of his own, saying he couldn’t answer it because it was ambigous because of some minor point of wording, etc. That assistant DA whispered that “this guy is a time bomb”, and said he would be bounced because people like him were “hung juries waiting to happen”. I got the impression that this was a definite “type” they were on the lookout for.
Act like some of our less rational posters in GD, I guess, and maybe you’ll be dismissed. Of course, I’m sure that putting on an act too obviously would piss off the judge and get you charged with something (contempt?).
Another panel member was a kid, who must have been old enough to serve on a jury, but looked about 15. The move by the lawyers which most surprised the assistant DA was that they kept the kid. She expected him to get bounced by the prosecution because “kids never want to convict”.
The format of my voir dire sounds different than what most are describing, here. They didn’t go down the line of prospective jurors individually deciding as they went. Most of the questions were asked of all of us at once. Those of us who raised our hands were asked to elaborate. At the end they brought borderline jurors individually into a small room where I guess they covered some of their answers in even more detail.
For example: “Which of you have any family members or friends in the medical field or who work in hospitals?” That sort of thing.
We had about 50 in our pool, and the selection process took all day. None of us knew until the end who was going to be cut and who was going to serve.
Sitting next to the assistant DA sounds like it would be interesting. I happened to sit next to a woman who had undergone nearly the same surgery that the plaintiff had.
In all likelihood these were jurors where it was a close call as to whether they were disqualified for cause. For instance, the answer “well, in light of that, I think I could be fair, but I’m not certain.” One side wants that person off, the other doesn’t. The judge isn’t sure so the respondent is brought in for further questioning, outside the presence of the rest of the panel.