After poking around the Internet to see why lawyers are often excluded from juries…
One risk for a mistrial is that some members of the jury will decide that someone else on the jury has a better understanding the case, of the law, of the judge’s orders, etc. and opt to simply follow their lead.
A lawyer on the jury makes that sort of situation far more likely.
Whether they’re targeting this outcome or not, given Team Trump’s general strategy of delay, I’d expect them to try and play this card, assuming a guilty verdict.
Right, some folks might never have felt the need to follow these cases before. But once they’re in the jury box, they kind of have to. And they’ll form their opinion based on what goes on in the courtroom, not on what goes on in some echo chamber. I’m not worried about those folks.
The worry is the person who keeps their MAGA sympathies to themselves and finagles their way onto the jury.
As an example, there was one of the Michael Jackson trials. Someone got on the jury who made up her mind and wanted to hang him. The weekend before the trial she went on a bus trip to Vegas. She was tipsy and loudly bragging about how she made it on and what she planned to do. Someone on the bus reported her and an alternate moved up.
And while I’m here, I live in Santa Barbara and got a jury duty summons right when they were about to start that trial. I was horrified until I realized that it was in the North County courthouse, not the one where I would have to go.
As a defense attorney, I’ve been taught to always request that the judge “poll” the jury if they vote guilty. That is, the judge will ask each individual juror if this is their verdict.
In reality, sone jurors will be persuaded by those around them, more than their own personal take, in reaching their final verdict. I think that’s inevitable when you bring together a cross section of the community. But I also think that the peer pressure of a jury room keeps rogue beliefs from interrupting a fair decision. That’s why I’m not so worried about a MAGA holdout; it will be hard to stand your ground when the other 11 people are all in lockstep against you.
But as to the lawyer issue: if I’m on the defense, and I’m going to have to argue that “this may have been sleazy or shady, but it didn’t technically violate the law,” then I’m okay with having lawyers in the jury who can draw that distinction.
Then again, if I’m the DA, I’m probably thrilled to have a corporate lawyer on a case about falsifying business records.
I wonder if there have been some subtle social-engineering questions used to evaluate jurors in this case. The overt questions are obvious – the “Ever worked on a Trump campaign?” stuff. There must be some around-the-back ways of ferreting out certain kinds of bias, as well.
Around here, when a group of people come upon the topic of jury duty, one thing commonly said it that you’re chances of being dismissed go up if you can work some kind of unreasonable bias about something into your voir dire responses. A common suggestion is to speak of the police in saintly tones, and to express that you’re pretty certain they’re almost always right about perpetrators. Things like that.
EDIT: Come to think of it, Bragg’s prosecution team probably doesn’t want any strongly pro-police jurors in the box if they can help it.
i was on a jury where one person held out. there was no moving her and her stand was not logical. she did not have a factual basis. nothing, and i mean nothing moved her. 3 days not moving. the judge finally let us stalemate.
turns out this was the third stalemate on these charges. tough case.
I think you can count on a request to poll the jury in this case.
I used to hate doing it, especially in multiple count criminal or complex civil litigation cases. Read out the count, then look each juror in the eye with gravitas: “Juror #1, as to Count 1, is the verdict as read your verdict?” Lather, rinse, repeat 11 more times. Then on to the next count and so on. The full polling process could take hours.
Sometimes it’s a dick move by the losing party. Rarely, it will ferret out problems with the verdict and/or how the verdict was reached.
I never blamed the lawyers for asking. Though I did wonder why they would ask to poll and then agree to a show of hands. What was the point?
Anyway, I am quite sure either side will ask to poll the jury in this case irrespective of the outcome.
Trump’s team was doing that in real time in an effort to disqualify jurors. That’s how Trump got to look at mean things that people said about him.
I believe I heard that no one is allowed to write down potential juror’s names and bring them out of the courtroom, but they are allowed to memorize the names if the’re able to.
Trump’s lawyers dug through prospective jurors’ social media posts to try to root out those with an anti-Trump bias from getting on the jury, even questioning several of them about their posts as the defense team asked to remove them from the jury for cause.
I haven’t. Polling seems like such a last ditch pathetic attempt. You just spent umpteen hours reaching a decision. Are you sure??
Sometimes when one of the jurors affirms the verdict, I want to yell “You , too?! But you were smiling and nodding during my closing!”
I really think the “science” of jury selection is overhyped. I’ve described it to clients as like bad speed dating. You’ll never get a true sense of the people. I mean, it is generally useful for excluding truly extreme types (who can’t sit still, or answer basic questions, or follow along), but as an attorney that’s about all you can hope for (that and trying to get the jury to find you likable and trustworthy)
But, time after time, it proves to me the idea that a cross section of the community, when presented with evidence (or lack thereof), will usually arrive at a sensible result.
I find that article curious. It talks only of Trump’s side mining social media based - presumably on challenges made. But the prosecutors would be fools to not skim Facebook for red hats and “Stop the Steal” messages.