I always wondered about this, and it occurred to me that probably the lawyers here would be able to answer my question.
Several years ago I was called to serve on a jury in a malpractice suit. The plaintiff had had a mastectomy and it turned out she didn’t actually have cancer after all. Apparently somebody in the lab had misread something. So naturally she was a bit pissed off.
Her lawyer stated very clearly that they wanted a multi-million dollar settlement, and wanted to know if we would go along with that.
I shook my head no. The judge asked me why. I said “at least you survived”. I wasn’t thinking that mastectomies are lethal; I was thinking about all the women who die of breast cancer and have no legal recourse.
The plaintiff gasped.
I was excused from service.
But what I REALLY wanted to say was something along the lines of, That is the worst prosthesis I ever saw, hanging around your waist there, you could at least TRY to move forward with your life, plus your lawyer is a big sleazeball, tell him to quit flipping his “Save the Children” tie over so the logo shows, I’m not impressed.
It surprised me that the selection process involved sort of “trying” the case – do people sometimes decide to settle, once they’ve heard a jury’s opinion of their argument?
And I always wondered if jurors are allowed to say that they think a lawyer is sleazy. Would that be considered “contempt” and get one thrown in jail?
Not necessarily, but it certainly guides them toward who to accept on the jury! And if TV shows and movies are to be believed, law firms with the means to do it use mock juries to design the strategy to go with in the courtroom. I can imagine they may do the same thing to decide they have no case, and settle.
Did they instruct you to answer only the questions asked? Then you could be in contempt for going beyond that to upbraid the other players.
NB: IANAL, just a couch potato. My ideas of the law extend to such things as settlements for a lifetime supply of lattes or a Marlboro Man billboard in Times Square.
I’ve heard accounts elsewhere of attorneys previewing lines of argument during jury selection, to sort of plant a seed for those jurors who will be chosen (as well as weed out the ones thought detrimental to your case).
The one time I got to potential juror questioning the defense attorney (representing a couple of guys charged with armed robbery) asked us whether we believed prison was for punishment or rehabilitation. I’m still sorry I didn’t answer “Neither” and get to explain that the chief purpose of imprisonment should be separation from society. I was excused anyway.
I was once excused from a jury in a similar way. It was our area’s first trial of the seat belt law. Ever the libertarian, I couldn’t wait to use what little power I had to hang the jury if necessary. And then the tricky questions started, the first of which was, “Do you believe you could render a fair and impartial verdict in this matter?” Unfortunately, I gave my kneejerk response. “Yes,” I said, “I believe that not-guilty would be perfectly fair and impartial.” I should have kept my damn mouth shut beyond the simple “yes”.
Well you got to remember the lawyer’s jog is to WIN. The jurors job is to decided or help decide who’s right, not to give your opinion.
I may not like my company supports the Republicans but it has nothing to do with my job. As long as they treat me with respect and pay me my money, who the company board of directors gives money to isn’t my business.
So if you really want to make a difference, you simply say nothing and make sure when you go to discuss, don’t be stubborn (So you won’t be excused for refusing to discuss the case) and vote how your opinion says you should.
You had a chance to influence the case but lost that chance because you exposed your hand too early.
Is it proper for a juror to hide a strong bias during questioning? In the last case I was on, a criminal case, one prospective juror said he didn’t believe the system could dispense justice. He was excused with thanks - special thanks from the judge who said he appreciated his candor. As foreman of that jury I was glad he was excused, since I wouldn’t want to go through deliberations with someone whose mind was made up ahead of time. Maybe he would have considered the facts, but maybe not.
As for convincing the client, I was on a jury for a civil case for about five minutes. The plaintiff’s attorney asked us no questions at all, and after being seated, and going home, we were dismissed immediately the next morning. I don’ t know for sure, but I suspect the plaintiff’s attorney had to convince his client that we weren’t going to be a sympathetic to her case as she had hoped.
I was called for jury selection. It was for a slip and fall case where an obese woman slipped on a spill and suffered a compound leg fracture. Her husband was added to the lawsuit for what was described as “Loss of consortium”, which apparently means that they don’t screw anymore because of the trauma of this incident.
First off, I think slip and fall lawsuits are completely ridiculous unless the company was clearly negligent. I’ve slipped many times in supermarkets. I doubt the supermarket was ever aware of the spill. Do you realize how many grapes go skittering across the floor and are inadvertently squished? The supermarket should be at fault if they were aware of the problem and did not clean it up immediately.
At the local Indian restaurant I spilled some curry and immediately told the manager. He just tried to sort of push it under the table with his shoe. Shortly thereafter, a woman slipped on it, but did not fall, fortunately. This was clear willful negligence and I would not have hesitated to testify against the manager. Hell, I should have just cleaned it up myself.
The lawyer asked potential jurors about whether they were prejudiced against fat people and basically, “Can you suspend all belief and actually conceive that anyone would want to screw this beast?”. I made no attempts to mask my disdain for the the dirtbag lawyer and his clients. I expressed my troubled feelings about the overly litigious nature of American society and what a drain it is on businesses. Ultimately, they threw me off the jury. I think I’m blacklisted as an unreasonable potential juror and have not ever been called back since, which in as much it is un-American, I don’t really regret it.
Allowed to mouth off? I’d say jury panelists, within reason, are encouraged to mouth off, if the lawyer is smart.
I always go to lengths to remind juries that voir dire means “speak the truth,” not say what you think the lawyer wants to hear (throwing in a quip about “you won’t hurt my feelings, I’m a lawyer, we don’t have any”). I tell them if they have strong feelings on a matter one way or the other, my client has a right to hear them, and it’s vitally important that they speak up. If someone has very strong feelings that may influence the case, they may be legally ineligible to sit on the jury, or the lawyer may want to use a peremptory challenge to prevent a strongly biased but legally eligible panelist. As an extreme example, if there’s an absolute tinfoil-hat wingnut asshole sitting on your jury panel, wouldn’t you want to know about it before he sneaks on the jury?
Care to educate a furriner about this process? It sounds like trying to pre-judge the issue. And why are people - other than the obvious exception mentioned previously - giving any other answer than something along the lines of, “I will be happy to decide the case on the facts presented in court”?
Because sometimes people AREN’T willing to decide the case based on the facts presented in court. They’re sure cops always tell the truth. They’re sure cops always lie. They’re sure all corporations are evil money-sucking organizatons of satan-worshippers. They’re sure all poor people are lazy drug-using lying weasels who should be thankful they aren’t ground up into fertillizer to be used in the gardens of decent hardworking business owners. They’re hippies who think the whole concept of courts is, like, bullshit, man. Or whatever.
Either that, or they intentionally say outrageous things to get themselves excused from jury duty.
The lawyers are trying to get RID of people who’ve prejudged the issue.
The prosecutor is trying to get rid of people who’ve prejudged the issue against the cops, the defendant’s lawyer is trying to get rid of people who’ve prejudged the issue against the accused. Sure, the prosecutor would be OK with people biased in favor of the prosecutor, the defendant would be OK with people biased in favor of the defendant. But in an adversarial courtroom situation, the presumption is that once the prosecutor/plaintiff has gotten rid of everyone unfair to the state/plaintiff, and the defendant has gotten rid of everyone unfair to the defendant, the only people left are those that will judge the case at least somewhat fairly.
There’s sometimes an element of trying to sell one’s case ahead of time, but (as I see on preview Lemur866 already stated eloquently) mostly it’s not so much about trying to pre-judge the issue as as it is to root out people who have already pre-judged the issue. It’s a mistake for a lawyer to assume that a jury panel will be composed of right-minded people who will of course agree their position and see things his or her way. Jury panels are a lot like message boards - all sorts of differing opinions, some small fraction of which are downright crazy. In some circumstances it’s just a matter of being too close to the issue: you may be a perfectly fair and reasonable juror in evrey case except, say, a DWI case due to a personal tragedy.
Say your house was burglarized and you lost everything. You got called onto a jury panel for a burglary, and knowing the damage burglary causes to the lives of burglary victims, told the lawyer that you could never, ever consider giving a burglar probation. That’s fine, but it makes you ineligible to sit on that particular jury because you are unable to consider the full range of punishment. The lawyers are trying to find out these sorts of things when they question the panel.
Along this line, let me use an example from when I was questioned for being on a jury panel. I’ll note that everything I said was true at the time; I wasn’t exaggerating or lying to try to get off a jury.
The case involved a two-car accident where the plaintiff was claiming long-term injuries and trying to sue for pain and suffering, extra medical bills, etc. She had been going to a chiropractor.
Meanwhile, we’d had to fill out little jury questionnaires asking your profession, if you had lawyers/law enforcement personnel in your family, if you’d ever been in a car accident, if you’d had dealings with the law, and so on. When the lawyers got to me, they went down the list:
I worked in the medical field; at the time I was an office manager-type for heart doctors. They asked me questions like if I discussed medical topics with the doctors (yes), how often (daily), if I had an educational background in biology/medicine (yes).
My sister-in-law is an insurance lawyer.
I’d been in a car accident in which the main victim’s insurance company had screwed up which car was the at-fault one (not ours) and which one his car had been forced into in the resulting chain reaction (ours). This resulted in a fight with their insurance company, threats to bring in lawyers, and finally a highly embarrassed insurance company apologizing profusely for the mixup.
They asked my opinion of chiropractors; at the time I was more critical of them than I am now, and so I honestly told them my opinion. This is probably closest to the “letting the juror mouth off” part, but one of the lawyers specifically asked, so I told them!
Not surprisingly, one of them moved to dismiss me.
Lawyers are trying to find who they think will be the “best” jury members, and both of them get chances to pick and choose who to boot; in theory this will eliminate the “extremes” on both ends and result in a more or less moderate jury.
Did you guys read the part where I said “it’s not that MASTECTOMIES are lethal, it’s that women die of breast cancer every day, and they have no legal recourse”.
Her anger was clearly justified, I just don’t see where one tit = millions of dollars. Unless you’re a porn star, perhaps.
“voir” is the French infinitive, “to see”, and “dire” is the French infinitive “to say”. I’ve always understood the phrase to mean a summary investigation - to look at the specific issue, and give a conclusion on it. Do you have a cite for your interpretation?
Honestly, that went into my gut reaction as well – she was at least 50 years old, and was suing a small Catholic hospital. I figured a million bucks would be right – enough for good reconstructive surgery, a nice house and a trip around the world with her family. SEVERAL million, as her lawyer kept repeating, I just couldn’t see it.
Maybe more details would’ve swayed me towards her, but that was my initial response (and I was honest enough to own it, so I didn’t serve on her jury). I mean, sure, doctors aren’t supposed to screw up, women are supposed to keep their breasts, life is supposed to be fair.
What about all these people coming back from Iraq minus body parts, who are they supposed to sue?
I thought it was a negotiation. If found guilty, then the actual amount is decided. A bit like when you try and sell something in a yard sale - you need to factor in that a bit of bartering will go on. Maybe I have it wrong.
And, you don’t really want us to go there do you, 'cos I’m sure quite a number of us have some ideas…?!
Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th ed. St. Paul, Minn.: West Pub. Co., 2004. It’s not so much modern French as it is “Law French,” Middle Anglo-Norman French that’s been boogered up by a few centuries of English speakers. The “voir” in voir dire is more closely related to the modern “voire,” meaning “indeed” or “truthfully,” deriving from the Latin verus, “true,” from which we also get “verily,” “verify,” and the Spanish “verdad.”
It’s not so much modern French as it is “Law French,” Middle Anglo-Norman French that’s been boogered up by a few centuries of English speakers. The “voir” in voir dire is more closely related to the modern “voire,” meaning “indeed” or “truthfully,” deriving from the Latin verus, “true,” from which we also get “verily,” “verify,” and the Spanish “verdad.”