Read Chaper 6, Jury Selection.
What was your level of knowledge about jury selection prior to reading this chapter? How is that different now? What was the most surprising thing you learned in this chapter? Now, choose one topic that you learned about in this chapter, and go out in the internet world and find out more about that topic/case/etc. Discuss what you found and provide your link(s).
I didn’t know that much about jury selection. What I did know was that you get picked to go and do it, and unless you have a really good excuse than you have to go. I know that being in a jury you get paid for your time, but it takes a while for you to get paid. There are twelve people on a jury with some alternates just in case someone can’t be in it anymore. I didn’t really know the process for picking out who was going to be on a jury.
I have learned that the steps to creating a jury. The first step is to pick people out of a list at random and then deselect people from there. They have to get the number down to twelve. It starts out with a jury pool, which are all mentally competent, English-speaking, adult U.S. citizen who have not been convicted of a felony, and they have to live in the relevant jurisdiction. They use voter registrations for the best information because there isn’t a list that tells you who fits the criteria. The main problem with this list is that it underestimates poor people, African Americans, Hispanics, people who frequently move, and people who recently turned eighteen. Once they pick the people who are going to be summoned they summon them, but usually about 20% show up. They are called the venire. The amount of people in a venire can vary from 30 to 100. People drop out because they don’t fit the qualifications. Some other reasons that people can be excused is because of vacations, only parent, serious medical problem, or because they are a big role in their community and it would cause the community hardship.
The final stage of jury selection is the Voir Dire. I knew that this was the process of jury selection, but it didn’t know what went into it. I have learned that this step in the jury selection process is when the attorneys and judge ask the potential jurors a series of questions. There are two challenges that a lawyer can use. They are challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. When a lawyer’s challenges a potential juror for cause it means that he or she thinks that the person is bias or prejudice, and it is unlikely that the juror will be able to render an impartial verdict based only on evidence and law. If after this fact the judge doesn’t choose to get rid of the potential juror than the lawyer can move onto peremptory challenge. This means that he attorney can dismiss the juror with no reason and without the judge’s permission, but the attorney is only allowed so many peremptory challenges. One thing that is looked for a jury to be unbiased is to have multiple races, ages, and sexes.
I feel like I know and understand a lot more about jury selection now. I did know a lot about juries and what they did during the trial, but I just didn’t know how they got to be on a jury because I haven’t talked to anyone who has been on one. Something that surprised me was the fact that they used voter registration to pick out who would be eligible to be a jury member. Something else that I found shocking was that there are people whose job it is to help the attorneys pick out a jury. They are called a jury consultant. I find that to be a very odd job. I don’t think it is possible to pick out a jury scientifically. Something that I found interesting is the shadow jury.
http://www.resolutionresearch.com/recruitment-shadow-jury.html
This website is pretty informative in how a shadow jury works. Some information that I found on this website are the benefits of having a shadow jury, and what they are used for. The benefits of a shadow jury are that they obtain immediate feedback regarding perception of arguments, determine whether primary points are coming across as intended, gauge influence of specific evidence or testimony, understand witness credibility, identify misunderstandings or confusion and prepare to correct those on the next day of trial.
http://www.juriscomm.com/juryselection.php
This website had a little paragraph about shadow jurors, but I found a piece of it interesting. S juror consultant will carefully select, train, monitor, and interview the surrogate jurors throughout the trial. Then he or she will call or write a report each evening for the attorney. Also shadow jurors are allowed to deliberate to a decision if they want.
Chapter 6: Jury Selection
Before reading this Chapter, I did not know very much about Jury Selection. What I did know, was that there were twelve jurors in a trial and I knew that the prosecution and the defense both got to pick 6 jurors. The prosecution looks for certain types of people, while the defense looks for other types of people. I also knew that if you are a Lawyer, Doctor, or Psychologist you will almost never be chosen for a jury.
In order to be selected for Jury Duty, you must be able to speak English, be over the age of 18, be mentally competent and you cannot be a felon. Anyone who has been convicted of a felony is no longer able to vote, own a firearm, or serve on a jury. The initial group of people who shows up to be selected for a jury is called the venire. When serving on a jury, you never know how long you might be serving. You could be serving as short as a few days or even as long as a few months. It all depends on the crime that was committed. The final stage of jury selection is called the Voir Dire. This is when the prosecution and defense attorneys ask the potential jurors a series of questions in order to see who they would like to serve on a jury. One way that psychology is relevant to jury selection is that many times stereotypes are used in order to select a jury. The prosecution wants people who they believe will see the defendant in a negative light. For example, they want someone who will be very offended that someone could commit a crime to that degree against someone or society.
Here is the first website that I found and I believe it is very creditable because it is a United States Court website and ends in .gov. It basically outlines certain requirements that one must have in order to serve on a jury. The part of this chapter that I found most interesting was the section that talked about the use of Trial Consultants. The way that our Criminal Justice System is set up makes it look like a big game. Sometimes you get lucky and win, but sometimes you lose.
http://www.uscourts.gov/FederalCourts/JuryService.aspx
Here is an article that I found on Jury Selection on TruTV.com. It is very interesting and talks about the controversies that are the result of jury selection. One example given was the highly publicized Scott Petersen vs. State of California.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/forensic_psychology/12.html
The only information I had about jury selection prior to reading this chapter is the information that I looked up for my role essays. For example, through doing my research for the role essay, I learned that jurors are randomly selected by computers. They then go through a more in depth selection process to determine any bias or prejudice that may interfere with the trial they will take part in.
From the information provided in this chapter, I learned that the “primary source” for a list of people who are eligible to be on the jury are voter registration lists. People are then randomly selected to appear at the courthouse. 20% of people summoned don’t show up. The group that shows up is called the venire. The venire may include 30- more than 100 people. Some people are lost from eligibility at this stage because they may be non-English speaking, they may be police officers of they may plea that jury service is too inconvenient for them. The final stage is called voir dire. In this stage the potential jurors are asked questions to determine who will serve on the jury. In this stage lawyers can remove or challenge potential jurors from the jury. This allows both sides to eliminate people, which help to create a fair and impartial jury.
A surprising/interesting thing that I learned in this chapter is that there are some personality tendencies that are associated with jury verdicts. Locus of control, belief in a just world, and authoritarianism are three traits that have shown to have an effects on how jurors interpret evidence and decide on a verdict. Locus of control is how people tend to explain what happens to them. It may be due to factors that they control, or it could be due to external forces. Belief in a just world refers to people getting what they deserve. People who exhibit authoritarianism don’t tolerate weakness, identify with and submit to authority figures, have rigid beliefs, and have conventional views.
I found the use of stereotypes in jury selection to be an interesting part of this chapter. This website gave me a more detailed list of stereotypes written by Darrow in 1936. Some information that was provided is if the client is a landlord, banker, or manufacturer, then jurors who are sympathetic to that class need to be in the box. It says that “every knowing lawyer seeks men for a jury that are the same as his client.” There is a lot of examples in this writing about religion and nationality. It examines Irishmen, Englishmen, Presbyterian, Baptists, Lutherans, and Jews. It also discusses women being in the jury box. http://jurylaw.typepad.com/deliberations/2009/01/darrow-and-stereotyping.html. Attractiveness, “baby faces,” race, accent, and speech are all ways in which stereotyping affects jury selection and decision making. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gary.sturt/crime/jury.htm
I feel that by reading this chapter and by doing research, I have learned a lot more than I previously knew about jury selection and the processes involved.
Read Chaper 6, Jury Selection.
What was your level of knowledge about jury selection prior to reading this chapter? How is that different now? What was the most surprising thing you learned in this chapter? Now, choose one topic that you learned about in this chapter, and go out in the internet world and find out more about that topic/case/etc. Discuss what you found and provide your link(s).
Prior to reading this chapter, my level of knowledge about jury selection was limited. From taking debate in high school, I knew that the burden of proof lies with the prosecution attorney because they are the ones claiming that the defendant broke the law and must also prove so beyond a reasonable doubt. This has stuck in my head because my debate team and I went on a winning streak as the defense attorney. I knew that there were circumstances in which a potential jury member would be told they are not wanted on the jury or they do not have to come, but I was unaware of the different challenges attorneys may exercise in order to obtain a desirable jury and that one of those challenges can even overrule a judge. I also knew that the right to a trial by an impartial jury in criminal cases is guaranteed by the 6th amendment. I did not know the terms used, such as voir dire, but learned it is French for, “to see and tell”. Something that surprised me was fact that women or men cannot be excluded because of their gender during voir dire was not established until 1994! Something I am curious about is whether or not there is a set standard or a test for attorneys to take when they think they no longer need the assistance of a social scientist or psychologist during voir dire, because this can dramatically impact a case. If one is not going to allow a psychologist to facilitate the creation of a desirable jury, then they should definitely practice with a shadow jury, or a group of people who will represent the real jury members of the trial, to see which strategies will work more effectively. I was not surprised to read about the personality tendencies of jury members and how those might affect their decision making. These three traits include: locus of control (whether it’s internal or external), belief in a just world, and authoritarianism. There are so many things to consider when selecting a jury; another aspect to ruminate is the similarity between the jury member and the defendant (in most cases) or the prosecutor. Obviously each respective attorney wants jury members more closely related to their client.
I was interested in what makes a lawyer decide to seek the help of a trial consultant. From this site: http://masslawblog.com/trials-2/jury-consultants-post-rajaratnam-are-they-worth-it/ I learned that one may not want to use a trial consultant because of the cost. The bigger the case, or if they do not think the odds are in their favor, the more money they are likely to spend on the use of trial consultants. Another reason is because lawyers bring their own judgments and prejudices to court which may disagree with what a psychologist has to say about the jury. Unless a lawyer also has his MA in a psychology related field, I believe it would be in the best interest of his or her client to consult a social scientist when constructing a jury for their trial. The site went on to say another thing that I found interesting, which is the fact that jury selection seems to be more about a battle between attorneys instead of everyone trying their best to get an accurate representation of the community.
Prior to reading chapter 6 in the C and K textbook, I had some understanding of the jury selection process in the legal system. The knowledge that I did have didn't come from a book or television show, but rather an actual trial I observed. I was fortunate enough to see the jury selection portion of the trial. I learned several things from observing the proceeding. First off, it was very apparent that the main goal for both the prosecution and defense in this portion of the trial is select unbiased individuals. Usually, the defense and prosecution will ask open ended questions to jury candidates concerning the nature of the actual offense that has been committed. For example, in a murder trial the defense will probably ask jury candidates whether they can put aside emotional motivations in coming up with a verdict. This can actually be a very entertaining part of the trial to watch. It really highlights who does not want to serve as a jury member. During this type of bias indication questioning, the people who don't want to serve will seize their opportunity and express their inherent disdain towards the defendant's actions. More often than not the court will dismiss these people, but occassionally the court will call out such individuals. This whole ordeal was really funny when I was observing the case, especially referring to two older stubborn men who just wanted to leave. Having to discussed this, there was still a lot of things I didn't know until I read this chapter.
The component I was discussing above was what the text referred to as voir dire. This was just one of the practices implemented in the four stages of jury selection. The process is a weeding out style that moves in stages from Jury Poool to Sample to Venire and then finally the actual Jury. Another main component that I learned about was how big a role science and stereotypes plays in the selection of a jury. Sceintific jury selection is highly complex process of selecting jurors. This technique involves collecting varying demographic information to determine what types of jurors are more likely to convict or acquit. This demographic information can include things like race, age, gender, education, income, religious affiliation, and political sytle. The murder trial with OJ Simpson was a major case that this technique was administered. Some believe that the case might have been completely different if the prosecution did not dismiss its jury consultants. This move placed the prosecution at a disadvantage from the beginning of the case.
Another main component that I learned about in this chapter was how the general personality tendencies of jurors can affect a case. Differences in juror's style of locus of control can affect how they view the case. Jurors with an internal locus of control may place more personal responsibility in the hands of the defendant, while a juror with an external locus of control could attribute the defendant's actions to outside uncontrollable forces. An individual's belief in a just world can also affect how they view a case. Depedning on a juror's view on justice, a case can be influenced by that juror whether they believe in a straight up action meets reaction world. Furthermore, authoritarian personalities can play role in the case. Jurors with this type of personality normally exhibit highly strict values and beliefs. They show more punitive tendencies to those who do not follow a society's established norms.
After reading this chapter I gained a lot of new knowledge about the jury selection process. However, there was one component that I wanted to investigate more. This was the topic of a shadow jury. In order to gain more information on this topic I referred to several internet sites. Shadow juries are usually used in high profile cases in order for attorneys to determine the direction a case is going. Shadow juries are demographically matched with the actual jury, and they hear all the evidence and proceedings of the actual case. Shadow juries offer a great source for attorneys improve their arguments by either making evidence clearer, adjusting approaches, or even assessing an approxiamate verdict. The best service a shadow jury offers is the fact that they offer daily feedback and interpretation of a case. The utilization of shadow juries is a really great tool for both defense and prosecution attorneys in high profile cases.
http://juryassociates.com/shadow_juries
http://www.juriscomm.com/juryselection.php
Before reading this chapter, my knowledge about jury selection was pretty much limited to my own personal experience. Last summer, I was notified that I had been assigned to jury duty. I eventually made it through the entire process and did serve on the jury in the end, though I’m sure my experience can’t be considered to be completely typical. Everyone’s experience on a jury will be different; mine was not nearly as laborious a process as come jury processes can be because the case was very low profile. While I learned a lot about the experience you go through as a juror from this experience, it wasn’t until I read this chapter that I was able to better understand the reasoning behind all of the processes.
What most surprised me about this chapter was studies have been done to find out more about scientific jury selection. I found it very interesting that attorneys actually didn’t do that great of a job in selecting jurors to get rid of who they thought would damage their case. While the impact of this ability may be seen when dealing with one attorney who is good at it and one who is not, the overall ability for attorneys to weed out potentially damaging jurors is not very impressive, as was shown in the study that found lawyers to be the equals of college students and law students when picking potential jurors to strike. This chapter used the two high profile cases of the “Harrisburg Seven” and O.J. Simpson to examine scientific jury selection, but the results were somewhat inconclusive, suggesting that there may simply be too many contributing factors related to any given jury member that will eventually lead to the verdict.
The main thing I learned in this chapter is that jury selection is important and you can weed out people who seem like a very big threat to your side, but in the end attorneys can very easily be off base in their reasoning when striking or keeping jurors. Even with the use of trial consultants, however, it is difficult to tell if one can actually pick the correct jurors and use specific tactics within the trial to sway their decisions. I thought it was interesting throughout the chapter how psychology is used in each of the different stages. From the voir dire and onward, attorneys use all sorts of clues from the potential jurors such as their physical appearance, the manner in which they answer questions (how assertively, how confidently, etc.), and information from the written questionnaire. All of this can be used to generalize about the potential jurors in order to try to predict if they will favor your side or at least think it over thoroughly. The manuals for attorneys with stereotypical guides on jury selection are a good example of this. In the end, however, I think that with the majority of potential jurors it is difficult to truly be able to hypothesize about their eventual verdict; all you can do is hope for the best in that each person you leave on the jury will hear you out.
I decided to learn more about trial consultants. The website I went to is for a company that specializes in trial consultations. It outlined their services, education, and what the point of their job is. It gives the outline for some of the basics that they would stress to a client during consultation: attorneys should listen carefully rather than talking a lot, using belief questions rather than demographics, and avoiding voir dire contamination. The website stated that they use decision analysis in psychology for jury research. I found this website to be very interesting because they deal with not only the jury at the time of the trial, but also outside research. http://www.trialconsultants.com/index.html
According to this website, trial consulting first became popular with OJ Simpson’s case. As it turns out, consultants may have degrees in many things other than psychology, such as business, marketing, or even astrology (I found this to be quite odd). Basically, this means that pretty much anyone can become a trial consultant. http://www.apa.org/careers/resources/profiles/stapp.aspx
After reading chapter six in Costanzo and Krauss I learned a lot about the process of selecting members of a community to serve on a jury panel for a trial case. Before this class I have taken two other classes that described this process which were criminal court systems and criminal justice systems but neither of them went into alot of detail about how the procedure was conducted. This chapter contradicted a lot of my previous beliefs in the fact that i thought that when you skip out on jury duty that you were eventually going to be hunted down and prosecuted for it; but the book states that people who fail to show up for jury duty are not aggresively pursued most of the time unless there isn't enought people that showed up to begin with.
One thing this I didn't know before reading this chapter is that attorneys are allowed to challenge potential jurors to get them removed form the panel becasue they don't think that they will help them when their case. This surprised me because I didn't think you the law would allow someones attorney to try and get them a panel of jurors that will aquitt them of charges especially if they are charged with murder. this is outrageous to me and i don't believe that the judicial system is any position to allow that to happen. I think that jurors should be completely random all the time and who cares if the they don't sympathize witht he defendant thats just the way the world works.
The thing that interested me the most after reading this chapter is realizing that our judicial system needs some help to find a way to choose good jurors for a case. It baffled me as to why after all these years of people bickering about how bad there jurors were in their trial and the government is appartently not doing a darn thing in order to make sure that the right people are choosen to serve on the panel no matter what the prosecution or defendant has to say about it. After looking around I found this article that pretty much says that challenges are not being used the way they were intended to be used. Lawyers use them inorder to try to give them the best chances at winning a case so it seems to me that they are more worried about their reputation then finding out the truth and having a fair and just trial.
http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/deplr43&div=21&id=&page=
My level of knowledge about jury duty has already improved since the beginning of this class. For the mock trial, my role is that of a juror, so I’ve previously researched information about jury duty. Some of the information in Chapter 6 was review for me. This chapter discussed the history of juries, how juries are assembled, stereotypes and science involved with juries, ethics of jury consulting, juror characteristics and attitudes as predictors of verdict, and an overview of trial procedure.
Chapter 6 Begins with a brief history of juries. I found it surprising that original juries were not designed to be neutral and unbiased. They were actually comprised of a defendant’s neighbors and acquaintances. The logic behind this was that previous dealing with the defendant and prior knowledge about his/her reputation would be useful for the court to assess the defendant’s credibility and likeliness of committing a crime. A better understanding of the defendant would help the jury reach a just verdict.
Today, the 7th Amendment guarantees us the right to a trial by jury. The jury is comprised of impartial people that represent “community values”.
Jurors are randomly selected. They must speak English, be over the age of 18, mentally competent, and never convicted of a felony. After the jurors are selected from the jury pool, everyone in this sample of potential jurors is sent a summons to appear in a particular courthouse at an assigned date and time. This group of prospective jurors that shows up is called the “venire”. Eventually, attorneys and the judge ask potential jurors a series of questions to determine who will serve on the jury. This process is called “voir dire”.
Lawyers have two types of challenges that they can use. “Challenges for cause” and “peremptory challenges”. The first, “challenges for cause”, means a lawyer challenges a would-be juror for a cause. When they make this challenge, they are claiming that because of bias or prejudice, it is unlikely the juror will be able to render an impartial verdict based only on evidence and law. A “peremptory challenge” is more powerful, it allows an attorney to dismiss a juror without giving a reason and without approval from the judge.
This chapter also discussed problems that can arise from defendant-juror similarity. Sometimes the characteristics of the defendant and the characteristics of the jurors interact in ways that influence the verdicts. The “similarity-leniency hypothesis” predicts that jurors who are similar to the defendant will empathize and identify with the defendant.
Jury selection is a long process. It is very difficult to create a completely impartial jury, especially because lawyers and consultants attempt to pick jurors who will best favor their side of the case.
http://www.mow.uscourts.gov/district/jury/jury_history.html
This website talks more about the history of juries. The Grand Jury can be traced to the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. In America, the Massachusetts Bay Colony impaneled the first Grand Jury in 1635 to consider cases of murder, robbery and wife beating.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21354621
This scholarly article investigated into the defendant-juror similarity. It studied the effect of juror gender and infant victim disability on juror’s reactions to infanticide cases. Juror gender did predict juror’s judgments.
Prior to reading this chapter I had very little knowledge about jury selection. To be honest I thought it was a random selection of people and once they were chosen that was that.
First potential jurors are selected at random from voter registration lists, licensed drivers lists, or telephone directories. Then the random sample of potential jurors are sent a summons to appear in court. The group that shows up is called venire (most people don’t show up). Attorneys and judges ask potential jurors questions to determine who will be chosen in the final stage called voir dire. Lawyers can challenge for cause meaning they don’t want a potential juror to be selected because the person may have a bias or prejudice that would influence their verdict. Lawyers can also do what is called a peremptory challenge which removes a juror without a reason or approval of the judge. Lawyers are given a small number of peremptory challenges and the number changes depends on the case, capital murder trial would have more peremptory challenges than a routine civil trial.
The most surprising thing I learned was that there are a few broad personality tendencies that are associated with the jury’s verdicts. Locus of control is how people explain what happens to them. People have an internal locus of control (outcomes are due to own abilities) of external locus of control (outcomes are due to outside forces). The book gives a good example stating that an “internal” juror is more likely to blame a woman for the sexual harassment she received.
I chose to research trial consultants because I have never heard of them until reading this chapter and their work seems appealing to me. Trial Consultants Inc. is one of the most experienced firms in trial consulting. They have done many high profile cases including the recent Casey Anthony murder trial. Basically Trial consultants Inc. gathers a group of many educated people from anthropologists to psychologists and create solutions to problems in litigation. Trial Consultants Inc. has organized 5 questions that should be asked in the voir dire process. They say the questions should be about: life experience, personality, decision making style, value beliefs, and which side the person identifies themselves with.
http://www.trialconsultants.com/abouttci.html
3/19/12
Before reading this chapter I knew a few things about being a juror because that is my role in this mock trial. However, I still learned some interesting things in this chapter; one being that I now know the terms that describe certain processes in jury selection and being a juror. For instance I was already aware of a jury pool and the issues that arise when trying to pull from a truly representative pool of people. There are also a large number of people that are called in for jury duty (much more than needed). There is supposed to be penalty for those that do not show up; but, according the text if there are enough people to make up a jury then sometimes the ‘no shows’ are ignored. For those that do show up it is called venire (from the text – this is the group of prospective jurors that show up).
I was aware of but still do not quite understand a one day or one trial system. When these persons only have to show up for a short time then when do they deliver their opinion of the case? How does deliberation happen? How can they get all the facts in order to make an informed decision when most trials take approximately one week?
The next section also offered new information. I knew that attorneys and judges could ask questions to determine whether or not a specific person would be a good juror for that particular case voir dire. However, I was not aware of peremptory challenges where an attorney can dismiss a juror without giving a reason and without approval from a judge. Attorneys are allotted a certain amount of these per trial. The number of challenges they are allow differs based on the type of case and the severity of the crime.
There are several other important items in this chapter most of which I was familiar with. For the rest of this assignment I did further research on locus of control. Locus of control is defined in the text as how people tend to explain what happens to them. There is internal and external locus of control. Internal locus of control is when people see their outcomes in life as due to their own abilities or effort. External locus of control is when people see the outcomes of their life as a result of outside forces (like from luck or from people with more power).
The articles that I found related to this topic. One was very closely related to what was discussed in the book. The other article I read was more of a scholarly article and it looked at locus of control in terms of religious beliefs and or spirituality. I think this is very interesting. A lot of elements of faith seem to have similar qualities as external locus of control. I find it very interesting when there are these types of parallels between science and religion. It reminds me of a quote I have heard said by Einstein (this is not verbatim) but I was told that he once said that science is just how God makes everything work. I love this quote! And after researching locus of control a bit more this is what comes to mind. This is a very interesting chapter.
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_90.htm
http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/jur-online/PDF/2004/stanke.pdf
Before reading chapter six I did not know much about jury selection except that it was ramdom and mandatory.I also knew that juriors recieved a small compensation for their service and of course that there are twelve of them not including alternates. I really did not know much about the jury selection process.
After reading the chapter I learned that first the people are gasthered into a pool based on voter registration information. The pool of possible jurors are all mentally compotent, english speaking, adult U.S. citizens. From there the deselaction process starts until they have enough people that fit the criteria to make a sample. These people are summoned to report for jury duty. Once the people are summoned they have to show up for jury duty, those that actually show up are called the Venire. The Venire then have to go through the Voir Dire process which is a series of questions that allow lawyers to highlight any biases that jurors may have that may potentially influence the verdict. Once the sample has been filtered through this process a jury is born.
I would say that they most surprising thing I learned in this chapter was that attorneys get to challenge jurors. I also found "scientific jury selection to be interesting so I wanted to learn more about it because of its connections to psychology and sociology.
http://www.publications.villanova.edu/Concept/2005/jury_selection.pdf
Chapter 6
Before reading this chapter i knew a fair amount about being a juror in a court case. The reasons i know some things ,not all, was because in my time i have been in court and i know people who have been jurors. I also know a little bit because im a juror in the mock murder trial that we are doing in class and i wanted to learn up on what resposibilities are. The information that i found out even after reading this chapter was that picking a juror is a long process, and it is long so they can pick an unbiased juror. It is also hard to achieve this because the defense and the prosecution are trying to pick jurors that are sympathetic to their side. I also learned that even though they do that it is hard for the jury selection to influence the verdict of the case. By this i mean that the defense cant just have jurors that are sympathetic to their side, and the same thing works for the prosecution. I also learned in this chapter the overview of the trial procedure which is opening statements, and this is done by the defense and the prosecution. The prosecuter has to go first during this to bear the burden of proof. Then the defense comes in with the reasonable doubt, but reasonable doubt only happens in criminal cases, if it was a civil case it would be called preponderance of evidence. Then it goes to direct examination, cross examination, redirection, and recross. One thing that interested me a lot is defendant juror similarity.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1394243?uid=3739640&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=55919846203
What I found out is that the juror starts feeling sympathetic towards the defendant because of certain aspects of his character. This could be potentially huge because of the impact it would have on the american judical system.
Before reading chapter six, I knew a few things about jury duty but not the extent of it. I knew that people are randomly chosen for jury duty by a computer then questioned to see if they are biased for the case. If so, they are not selected. Before reading this chapter I also knew that if you are selected you have to go in to serve on the jury, unless you have a good excuse and absolutely cannot do it. I know that the jurors get paid for spending their time on the jury, they are reimbursed for the miles that had to drive and depending on how long the trial is they are paid for the time spent on the jury. I also know that the jury sits through the whole trial and they are the ones who come up with a verdict to decide whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty.
I did learn a few things from reading chapter six. I did not know that an attorney could dismiss a juror at anytime throughout the trial without a valid reason and without the permission of the judge. I also learned that people who selected for the jury are sometimes misjudged and end up not being the right decision for the trial. Some attorneys think their questions are accurate to find out about each one of the jurors, but turns out they could be very wrong and then be short for the number of jury members. I learned that the people who show up for the elimination process is called the venire and a lot of people may show up, but most are dismissed due to certain reasons like their jobs, their race, or because some may not even speak english so they are no good to the case. The venire may vary from thirty to one hundred people but many are weeded out. The random selection does not weed out anybody, so their are a lot of people who are no good for the trial that show up because they have to.
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was the selection process. I didn't know that it was a very extensive procedure. I figured that people were randomly selected and had to show up to see if they are right for the trial or not. I have never served on jury duty, and when I turned eighteen I only got a letter that said I had to call in but my number was never called upon. I think it's interesting that the selection of the jury is a very important process in the trial and if you choose wrong it could hold a biased result of the jury. I didn't know that people are chosen for different reasons depending on the jury and that people examine each one of the jurors to see if they are right for the case. Trial consultants place a big role in choosing the jury because they are the ones that analyze each person. I didn't know that there were people hired for this job. I thought it was just the police officers or attorneys that chose the jury.
I decided to learn more about trial consultants and what they actually have to do in choosing the jurors. I never even knew such people existed until I read this chapter. This website is about a firm of trial consultants and they are pretty important. This firm is all about trial consultants and what they do and different things they have to do. I found it very interesting.
http://www.trialconsultants.com/
Before reading chapter six I had little knowledge about how the jury selection process was. I knew that there are twelve members that serve on a jury, that if you serve you get paid a small amount for your time, and that if you are selected to serve you receive a letter in the mail saying where and when to show up.
After reading I learned that there is a lot more to the process than just receiving a letter and showing up. It starts out with a jury pool consisting of people that are mentally competent, english speaking, adult us citizens who have not been convicted of a felony and who are living in the relevant jurisdiction. The problem with this list is that is often times doesn't represent everyone for example, poor people, African americans, hispanics, people who have just turned 18, and people who have just moved. After that first step this is when the letter is sent out to the people saying where to go and where. This group of people who do actually show up are called the venire. I found it quite surprising that only twenty percent of the people who are summoned fail to attend. And also that there isn't punishment for those people that fail to show up. Depending on the case there will be more people in the venire. The venire stinks in size even more after questionnaires, if serving would cause undue hardship responsibility for caring for a your child, serious medical condition, planned trip, or if them serving would cause hardship to the town. Voir dire is the final step in process of jury selection which consists of lawyers and the judge asking to potential jurors questions and interviews to decide who will eventually serve. Attorneys have two chances to remove potential jurors. The first is challenge for causes, which is the lawyer claiming the potential juror is biased or prejudice and it will inhibit them from coming to a verdict based on evidence and law only. If a judge doesnt dismiss the juror with the challenge of cause then the attorney can use a peremptory challenge and excuse the juror without reason or permission of the judge. Attorneys are given a limited number of peremptory challenges per case. Locus of control, belief in a just world, and authoritarianism are three traits that have been found to have an influence of the jurors verdict. The similarity-liencency hypothesis says that jurors who are similar to the defendant will identify with them and be empathetic towards them. A study conducted to test that hypothesis found that in a racially diverse jury vs. an all white jury the mixed jury deliberates longer, discussed more evidence, and found the defendant guilty less often.
I researched more online about what happens if you skip jury duty. On the first site it talks about the possible punishments if you skip out on jury duty in Palm Beach County. You will be charged a fee and could get possible jail time. It also said that in their county only sixty percent of the people do actually show up.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/fl-jury-duty-scofflaws-20120316,0,5406084.story
http://www.jaapl.org/content/37/1/63.full
The site above talks about personality traits and the influence. It mentions the five factor model: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Jurors high in openness are less influenced by other jurors and jurors high in conscientiousness are more influenced by their others.
Before reading this chapter I didn't know very much about jury selection. What I did know was that there are 12 members to a jury. They are randomly selected, and are required to be apart of the jury as long as the trial last. They only get released if they know one of the defendents, lawyers, or someone else who will interfere with their decision making for the verdict. I don't know much else about jury selection before reading this chapter.
Jury members are chosen to be impartial to the court case. This is why jury selection is more like "deselection" because members are dismissed along the long process. What I found interesting is that the jury comissioner picks jury members by using the local voter registration. They can go further than this and use driver licenses registry or telephone directories to have a more unbiased jury, but this is not required. From this list of people, random samples are drawn and are summoned to show up at a courthouse. These people are called venires or the panel. The venire is larger than what is actually needed because people either don't show up or become exempt. For the people who don't show up, they usually don't get in trouble as long as enough other people showed up. Also there is a variety of reasons why a person may become exempt, like: blind, doesn't speak english, or being apart may cause "undue hardship of extreme inconvience." Expemtions have been greatly reduced over the years, one reason being one day trials. This is when the jury member is done at the end of the day. I also found it interesting that some trials go on for months at a time, this seems like a lot of time for one court case. Most members of the venire will not be used in the trial.
The final step in jury selection is voir dire. This is when the potential jury members show up to a pretrial where they are questioned by the judge and the lawyers. This is the stage where the judge can try to dismiss a potential juror by using "challenges for cause". There is no limits for the challenges that a lawyer may use, but it is up to the judge to decide whether or not to dismiss the potential juror. If they do not dismiss them the lawyer can decide whethter or not to use a peremptory challenge. This is when lawyers can remove a potential lawyer for no reason. Each side only gets a select number of these, and they are based on the type or seriousness of the trial.
I found using science in choosing jury members to be very interesting. It is when people analyze potential jurors to see if they would be more prodefense or proprosecutor. This is why jury consultants may be used to help a side build their case, and change strategies during the trial. What I found most surprising in this chapter is the focus of personality tendencies when choosing jury members. They look at locus of control (internal and external), belief in a just world, and authoritarianism. The rest of the chapter focused on how jurors reacted during trial, whether it was connecting with defendent or how they processed all of the information they were given.
I wanted to learn more about the use of a shadow jury because I had never heard of it before reading this chapter and I found it quite interesting. Shadow jurors are demographically similar to the actual jury. They sit in on and watch the entire trial. They give the lawyers feedback on how the actual jury is responding to their case. They will inform the lawyers on what is confusing or what they need to do to make evidence more compelling. They give their feedback through interviews and daily reports.
http://juryassociates.com/shadow_juries
Before reading this chapter the only knowledge I had of jury selection was that you needed to be at least 18 years old and that you have to go through a series of questioning to make sure you are fit to be on a jury.
After reading this chapter that there is much more to selecting jury members. First, jury commissioners do their best to have a "list" of people in a particular geographical area that are over the age of 18, speak English, are mentally competent, and have never been convicted of a felony. This is hard to keep track of because people are dying or moving away or whatever the case may be. After this pool of jurors has been formed a random sample is drawn and everyone in the sample is sent a summons to appear in a particular courthouse at an assigned date and time. This group is called the venire. The final stage in the process is voir dire where attorneys and the judge ask the potential jurors questions to see who is fit to serve on the jury. Whoever survives this voir dire process makeup the members of the jury.
One thing I found interesting in this chapter was the types of personality tendencies associated with jury verdicts. The locus of control refers to how people tend to explain what happens to them. There is the internal locus of control which is people who tend to see the outcomes in life as due to their own ability or effort. There is also the external locus of control which is people who see their outcomes in life as due to some outside force such as a higher power or they're just really lucky. Another interesting personality characteristic is called the belief in a just world. People who tend to believe in a just world tend to derogate victims meaning they did something to bring it upon themselves. Another final trait is the authoritarianism trait. People with this type of personality tend to have conventional values, are intolerant of weakness, tend to identify with and submit to authority, and are more suspicious toward people who violate established norms and rules. All these personality traits can have an effect on the final jury verdict.
One thing I thought was interesting because I had never heard of it before was the trial consultant and I decided to research more about them. While researching trial consultant I saw that there are also jury consultants. I learned that in high-profile cases lawyers use jury consultants to gain a winning edge. They are behavior experts that help lawyers provide insight to juror behavior and attitudes. Before trial they research juror backgrounds, create profiles, assist in the selection of jury members, and other things. During the trial, the role of the jury consultant is to develop strategies to help shape juror perceptions and lead to a favorable outcome. In order to become a jury consultant you must have a minimum of a bachelor's degree in behavioral science, sociology, political science, criminology, psychology or another social science. They are hired mostly hired for their knowledge of human behavior and not necessarily their legal expertise.
legalcareers.about.com/od/careerprofiles/p/juryconsultants.htm
Last semester, I did an internship with the Juvenile Public Defenders office in Waterloo. Many of the cases did not require a jury; however, every once in a while they would receive cases from the adult office due to overload. One case in particular was a domestic abuse case. I went to a few days of the trial and sat to discuss the jury selection with her. She had a map of the different jurors mapped out on the inside of folder. We went through the process and described to me how she selected her jury. From what I remember, it was lengthy, intense processes. On the folder, it had a description of the potential jurors down to their clothes and personal attributes. Next to that she had brief notes of things she leared while questioning them. I remember discussing the process she went through. She questioned them and determined them based on their chance of feeling sympathetic to the defendant. She also determined based on gender and race. The most that stood out me was the educational background that she based a lot of her judgment on. The less they knew about the court system, the better.
I knew that she had a choice in determining who was on the jury. However, I learned in the book more specifically how she dismissed people. Essential, there are three ways. The two main ways is challenges for causes and peremptory challenges. The challenges for cause are when the juror would not be able to remain unbiased on the case. In the case I experienced, she had an individual that had suffered from domestic abuse. They were one of the first people to go. The second way is through peremptory challenges. This is when the attorney has the right to eliminate individuals without a reason. I remember discussing her choices when using this option. One individual she terminated because he was very educated and had a great background on the law. She felt it was harmful to her case because she was trying to acquire a lesser punishment by using different specifics due to the way the law was worded. The last way to limit members of a jury panel is through cognizable characteristics. This is when the jurors have characteristics that are significantly different from the other potential jurors. I don’t believe this was ever an big issue with our jury.
The book talked a great deal of using stereotypes to choose the jury. Like mentioned earlier, the attorney I was working with did a great deal of this. A lot of her decisions were based on assumptions she had gathered through many years of defending clients. However, I have never heard of scientific jury selection. That was very interesting to learn about. I didn’t think that science could affect a jury selection. However, the shadow jury was a great test to show if attorneys have a good insight on jurors. I think it would be interesting to do different experiments on attorneys in different situations.
I also didn’t know that trial consultants could be used in cases. Trial consultants are individuals who study and interpret juror questioners based on their education. I find how interesting it is that they can find the best route for an attorney to take in order to have the best chance at winning a case.
I was really interested in learning more about trial consultants and their duties. The first website I found emphasizes characteristics of a trial consultant, or jury consultant. It reminded me a lot of a profiler. They watched body language and peoples facial expressions. They also look at an individual’s answers and try to predict how they will respond to other situations. After the trial has begun, the trial consultant then examines the trial and distinguishing what is affecting or not affecting the jurors. This can help the attorney in its path of the trial.
http://www.lawcrossing.com/article/2369/The-Case-for-Jury-Consultants/#
The second website I found delved into a person interested in becoming a trial consultant. I think this help summarized how a trial consultant works and its job description. A lot of the required skills consisted of analyzing the human behavior and the ability to record and observe it. Statistical analysis was very prominent as well. One thing that I saw on other various websites I visited was strong writing and people skills. It didn’t really discuss too much on a specific degree; however, it suggested advanced degrees in social science, which makes sense when relating it to the skills that are needed for the job.
http://www.trialbehavior.com/contact/FAQ/faq_career
What was your level of knowledge about jury selection prior to reading this chapter?
I have some general knowledge about jury selection but not much. I know that you get a letter in the mail announcing you have been selected for jury duty and you have to go unless you get dismissed for specific reasons. Every case can vary on the type of people you get for a jury. i.e. if you are doing a case with children involved you many want more women involved then men. For more serious trials like murder they will select tens of people and then slowly cute them down to just a few after several interview processes. You also get paid to be on Jury duty. Its not much, but its better than nothing. Work also has to excuse you when you are called for jury duty, they are not allowed to fire you or punish you in any way for serving. Once you serve does not mean you are in the clear for the next couple years. Some people get called to serve on jury duty several times while some people may never be called to serve. I have learned from knowing people who have served on jury duty that you are in no way allowed to talk about the case to anyone except other jurors, but the talking can only go on during specific times. Trials can also last from a day to several, depending on the case and the agreenece between the other jurors. When they do make a decision it is based on a vote.
How is that different now?
The selection process that potential jury members has a name for each stage. The first is the jury pool that includes anyone who is a mentally competent, english speaking, adult, us citizen, who has not been convicted of a felony. The next group is a sample group. That consists of the group of people who have been selected out of the jury pool. The sample pool can range from 30 to over 100 people depending on the case. After the sample group is selcted it goes down to the Venire group. Those are the people who actually show up on the day they are summonsed, about 20% of people will not show. And finally comes the jury. The jury is the group of people that made it through the voir dire process. To survive the voir dire you have to go through a series of questions and from the answers to those questions a jury will be selected.
A lawyer can use the peremptory challenge during jury selection. It allows the attorney to dismiss a juror without reason or approval from the judge if the judge refuses to dismiss a potential juror for a cause. In smaller case an attorney may be allowed as few as 3 peremptory challenges and in larger cases they may get as many as 25. The defense can get more peremptory challenges than the prosecution because they have more to lose.
In 1972 the first attempt at "scientific jury selection" was made. Researchers interview more than 800 residents of Harrisburg and gathered their geographic info. They then measured the characteristics and attitudes towards the defendant. Next they used these measurements to decided who would be proprosecution or prodefense.
Trial consulatants can be used in the jury selection process too. They are usually used hired by companies who are being sued for large amounts of money. They attempt to gain insight on the potential jury members characteristices and get an idea of how they will vote in the trial. Weather this process works or not is unknown but what is know is that jury selection can be improved by measuring case specific attitudes.
There are three traits that tend to be associated with jury verdicts- locus of control, belief in a just world, and authoritarianism, but only when the evidence in favor of conviction is less than compelling.
What was the most surprising thing you learned in this chapter?
The thing I found most interesting is that characteristics of the juror and defendant can interact in ways that influence the verdict. This is because the juror will identify and empathize with the defendant and in turn becomes less likely to convict.
Now, choose one topic that you learned about in this chapter, and go out in the internet world and find out more about that topic/case/etc. Discuss what you found and provide your link(s).
I choose to learn more about trial consultants.
They are social scientists used to aid attorneys in a criminal trial. They not only help select juries, but they also help prepare witnesses and improve rhetoric.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_consulting
If you wanted to become a trial consultant there are no requirements you would have to meet, but are preferred to have education or degrees in certain areas.
http://www.magnusweb.com/content?m=faq&c=2&r=2
The average salary for a trial consultant is 73,000 but can vary greatly due to company, location, industry, experience and benefits.
http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-Trial+Consultant
There were some things that I already knew about jury selection prior to reading this chapter. Having read The Prosecutors, I already knew how It can be biased in favor of the prosecution, because they try to select jurors who will generally all conform to the same decision, so they are almost like sheep to be led wherever the prosecutor takes them; and in return, defense attorneys like the loner type jurors who are more likely to go against the grain of everyone else.
However, the textbook tried to make the jury selection process seem very unbiased. I agree with the book that the system is DESIGNED to be unbiased, however its only logic for saying that it does not favor either side is that there is no statistical evidence to suggest it significantly favors one side or the other. This obviously does not prove anything, because you obviously can't get reliable data from case studies. It is impossible to find significant statistics if you aren't running a clinical trial, and court cases would be considered case studies. It is not scientific because we can't commit a crime in a lab and know that the person is guilty and then control what evidence is left behind/found. When dealing with human subjects, we can't control the innumerable variables, so therefore it is obvious that there should be no statistically significant correlations between biased jury selection and the end verdict. Sometimes the prosecution does a very good job, and sometimes not so much. Sometimes the defense does very well, and other times it completely fails. And the most important variable: sometimes the defendant actually committed the crime, and sometimes he/she didn't.
I still maintain my belief that even though the jury selection system is set up to be neutral, individual humans are not capable of being completely unbiased, and the person who selects the jury will naturally (possibly not maliciously or even intentionally) select jurors who they think will side with them.
I did not know much about the elimination process of juries, such as the jury pool, the venire, and the voir dire. I appreciated this chapter, because it gave some very good reasons why I should serve on a jury if I am selected...it would give me a good inside look at the justice system, and although it may not be perfect, it allows the individual citizens to have a say in the justice system, as opposed to letting the government have totalitarian control. I am looking forward to someday being selected for a jury.
I didn't know a whole lot about jury selection before reading this chapter. I knew the general process of it, but I didn't know many specifics that go into actually selecting one. After reading this chapter, I feel much more informed about what this extensive process involves. Which is good since I was just called for jury duty in April!
Learning the official terms of the different stages of jury selection was interesting. Venire, which is the calling of the jurors to court, and voir dire, which is when the attorneys and judge ask the potential jurors some questions. I also didn't know that each attorney gets what's called peremptory challenge, in which he or she can excuse jurors without approval from even the judge. This shows how much power they can have and would be a very useful thing to have during a jury selection. It was also interesting to read about the different characteristics that are sought after or not desired for a potential juror, such as women for rape and baby cases, or to take choose a wealthy man because he is likely to convict unless the defendent has done a crime that he may be in favor of or not be affected by, such as selling worthless stock or violating the anti-trust law.
I also had no idea there was such thing as a trial consultant. This being when a large group serves as a mock jury and the jury's discussion is then watched by the consultant as to provide insight to arguments and jurors. If the case goes to trial the consultant can design and analyze supplemental juror questionnaires that some jurors can fill out. Another tactic used is the Juror Bias Scale to try and isolate the jurors' beliefs.
This website digs very extensively into the entire selection of how to pick a jury. It gave lots of break-downs about how to present yourself during the process.
http://criminaldefense.homestead.com/JurySelection.html
The second link gave 10 tips about how to observe the jury and the little things that make a big difference, such as your appearance and making eye contact with them rather than taking lots of notes.
http://www.therightjury.com/publications_tips_jury_selection.html
Reading about jury selection was both interesting and informative. I can definitely say I've learned a lot more than I knew before and can use this information if I have to serve on a jury.
Usually when I think of the jury selection process I think of films in which this process has been depicted. The film that most readily comes to mind is Runaway Jury. This is a great film but I know that it is over exaggerated. In the film, they are choosing a jury for one the biggest cases concerning gun control. Because of this film and other TV shows and movies, I was familiar with the basic process of jury selection. I know that the venire is selected mostly from voter registration records and that you can only serve as jury in the county you are registered in. I also knew that attorney’s had the opportunity to question the venire and pass judgment on whether or not they wanted them in their jury. From the film Runaway Jury, I was familiar with the use of jury consultants, especially in the highly publicized cases. I have always thought that this film over exaggerates the use of jury consultants and how much they can actually do. In the film the consultant’s team was following the potential jurors and then profiling them on the information they collected. I was never sold on the fact that jury consultants go to that extent but I could be wrong. This film also makes the use of jury consultants seem wrong. They whole point of the process to end up with a jury that is impartial. In the film you can tell that this is not the goal of the consultants and attorneys, because instead they are trying to stack the jury completely in their favor.
So before reading this chapter I knew the basics about jury selection, but I don’t know all of the details. For example, I was not sure how attorneys could strike a potential juror. From the chapter I now know that there are two types of challenges an attorney can make during the voir dire process. A challenge for cause is when the attorney claims that the juror is likely to impartial because of bias or prejudice they hold. This type of challenged must be approved by the judge. The second type of challenge is peremptory challenge, which is more powerful in that the attorney can dismiss a juror without a reason or permission form the judge. This type of challenge is limited. Depending on the type of case attorneys may be given as little as 3 or as many as 25. I also learned a lot about the scientific jury selection. I was very interested in the study that looked at whether or not attorneys were successful in eliminating jurors that would be unsympathetic to their side of the case. Surprisingly, this study found that most of the time the attorneys are not successful because they made as many good challenges as bad challenges. Another study also showed that college students are just as good as attorney’s in choosing favorable jurors.
I was surprised to learn that predicting the decision of jurors is near impossible. I’ve always assumed that attorneys and juror consultants have some way of knowing the likelihood of a person sympathizing with their case. The truth is that personality characteristics and demographics aren’t solid predictors. People don’t fit into a mold that tells you how they are going to perceive the facts of the case. I was also surprised to hear that many people in the venire don’t even show up on the day of jury selection. I’ve always known that it was a crime to not show up when summoned for jury duty so I assumed that police would penalize those who broke this law.
I decided to do further research on shadow juries. I was interested in the costs and benefits of using shadow juries as a tool in trials. The benefits of having a shadow jury include seeing things through an untrained eye. Lawyers are trained so that they view things a specific way. The now more about the legal system than most jurors and therefore are unable to view things the same way a real jury might. Being able to thing like a juror is important in predicting what they might do. Another benefit that is related to the first is the fact that lawyers might know the case too well. Lawyers have been working on a case for a while before it goes to trial. Consequently, the lawyer knows too many details and insights into the case the jury does not know. Some costs to using the shadow jury is the chance that you might rely on them too much. Not only are shadow juries expensive, but you can never predict exactly how a juror is going to react to the facts of a case.
http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/litigationnews/trial_skills/trial-practice-shadow-juries.html
Before reading this chapter, I thought I knew all there was to know about jury selection. After all, what is so difficult about choosing a couple folks to represent the community for a trial? As it turns out, there is a lot more to selecting jury members than I would have ever imagined. Much of the chapter's content was familiar to me, although there even more that was not. For starters, I had no idea that "challenges" were a part of the selection process. In fact, the challenges are vital to ensuring that the attorneys achieve a jury selection of their liking. The way the challenges are used in the process sounds a lot like a game show to me. "Which contestant will move on?" The Latin term venire as well as the French term voir dire were new to me as was the 20% figure pertaining to those who don't show up to jury duty. This leads me to my next topic. I was always under the impression that if you skipped out on jury duty that you could have a warrant put out for your arrest (unless you notified the clerk of court beforehand that you were unable to serve due to an emergency). As it turns out, if there are enough jurors that do show up, no one seems to care. This was confirmed by my friend's dad who is a prosecuting attorney in Des Moines.
I have always found it rather strange that the defense attorney gets more challenges due to their client having more at stake. Following this thought process, I would be lead to believe that the defense should have the last word in the closing statements. However, the opposite is true and the prosecution always gets that edge in leaving the jury with the last words.
The last bit of information that was new to me was the concept of a shadow jury. I had no idea that attorneys practiced this. It is a very good idea however. Having a shadow jury definitely helps attorney get a feel for how the jury is reacting to the trial. As stated in the text, this allows the attorney to switch up strategy if they feel that their's is being poorly executed.
http://www.all-about-forensic-psychology.com/jury-selection.html
This was an interesting site that deals with the improvement of the jury selection process. More specifically, questions regarding attitude, affiliation, as well as questions related to a juror's experience are looked at as possible ways of improving the selection process.
http://subboard.com/legal/resources/packets/pdf/07jury_duty_selection.pdf
This site delves into specifics regarding the duties and responsibilities of the juror. There was a lot of information on this site that was not touched on in class or in the text. For example, I learned that only in civil cases does the jury get to select their foreperson. In criminal trials, the foreperson is almost always the first jury member selected. I also learned that jurors are rarely present and are not required to attend sentencing hearings.
Before reading the chapter, I knew a bit about jury selection from what my mom told me about the process. She served on a jury last summer in my hometown for a murder case. She said jury selection lasted several hours. First, she and all the other candidates had to fill out paperwork in which they wrote things like their age, profession, and so forth. In her selection, a group of 20 people on jury duty was called up, then both attorneys asked the jury candidates questions. My mom was surprised by the amount of information that the attorneys remembered about her and the other candidates from the paperwork they filled out. The prosecutor remembered that she was a teacher and that she had 4 kids of her own. The case she was a juror for involved a kid who killed a man when he was 17, but he turned 18 while in custody so he was tried as an adult. The prosecutor asked my mom questions specific to her experience with young adults as a teacher and if she thought a 17 year old could and should be held accountable for his actions. While the jurors were being interviewed, some were dismissed and replaced with another potential jury member. This continued until there were only 20 or so people left. Then the attorneys bid for who they wanted to be on the jury. I don't quite remember how she described it, but each attorney got a certain number of "bids" which they used to pick people they wanted to be on the jury. Eventually a jury of 12 people was chosen. Two of those people were alternate jurors, though none of the jury knew which two people were the alternates, and all of them sat in during the trial.
After reading the chapter, I learned the technical terminology associated with the different stages they my mom described to me. Apparently, since my mom showed up for jury duty, she was part of the venire before she was selected to be in the jury. Also the questioning stage of jury selection is called the voir dire. The lawyers used challenges for cause and peremptory challenges in order to dismiss potential jury members. The chapter also discussed some juror stereotypes and scientific methods of selecting juries. It made me wonder if there is a stereotype among lawyers about teachers making good jurors. I was really surprised when I learned about the presence of jury consultants. I never knew such a profession existed. I wonder how much a company would pay for such a thing.
The chapter continued with describing personality traits of jury members like locus of control, belief in a just world, and authoritarianism. I learned about these traits in social psychology. We talked a lot about locus of control and belief in a just world when we talked about group behavior and deviance, especially when we brought up Kitty Genovese. The chapter also talks about attitudes people have about the legal system and talks about the similarity-leniency hypothesis, which says if a juror sees him/herself as similar to the defendant, they will be more sympathetic and less likely to convict. The results of testing of this hypothesis were varied because sometimes similarity lead jurors to be more harsh instead of less. The chapter ended with a basic overview of a trial after a jury is selected. I was familiar with this procedure due to my experience with mock trial in high school and the trials that I have witnessed.
After reading the chapter, I wanted to look more into juror stereotypes.
This article spoke about racial discrimination in jury selection and studies about juries with a majority of black people or white people as well as the difference in the average wealth in jurors and its effect on jury decisions. The article found that juries with more black people were generally more sympathetic and less likely to convict or come to a consensus, regardless of the race of the defendant. Juries that had a higher average income were more likely to convict.
www.uh.edu/~jlehman2/papers/jurydisc_lehmannsmith.pdf
I didn't know very much about Jury selection before this chapter. I know that jury selection is important to both sides of the case because neither side want people who have prejudices that would make it hard for them to fairly judge the case.
From this chapter I first learned about the history of jury selection. The book talks about how laws and guidelines were derived to create a more fair jury. The chapter the goes on to discuss how juries are assembled. It discusses pools, venires and Voir Dire. The book then moves on to a section titled using stereotypes and science to select jurors. The scientific aspect of selecting jurors began in 1972 in Pennsylvania. Next the book moved to a section on the use of trial consultants. They are most common used by large companies. After that the book moved to juror characteristics and attitudes as predictors of verdict. The chapter ends with an overview of trial procedure.
I decided to further research challenges for cause. I learned that The defense always gets to make the first challenges for cause to individual jurors, thereafter the prosecution exercises its challenges for cause. The grounds for a cause challenge must be 1) general disqualification (e.g., language, mental or physical inability to serve), 2) actual bias, or 3) implied bias. Any challenge for cause must be made immediately following the individual voir dire.
http://www2.courtinfo.ca.gov/protem/courses/jury/04_01.htm
http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/dpen0025.pdf/$file/dpen0025.pdf
http://www.ncids.org/Defender%20Training/2011DefenderTrialSchool/ChallengesForCause.pdf
For our crime, I am a member of the jury. Because of this, I have done quite a bit of research on the topic of juries and jury selection. From my past research, I know that potential jurors can be asked a variety of questions in order to weed out jurors who will not help the case. Both the prosecutor and defense attorney are allowed to ask questions. They want to see who is going to help their case and favor the defendant or the prosecution. They are each allowed to pick 6 jurors, that way it should be split. I did not know about the challenges that lawyers can use on jurors. The first is challenges for cause. This is what I think of most often. Defendants do not want a juror who is biased, or a police officer, physician, etc. Basically, they do not want someone who is going to find them guilty immediately. The second type of challenge is peremptory challenges. This means that a lawyer may dismiss a juror without giving a reason and do not need approval from a judge.
I found the section on trial consultants to be very interesting. I've heard of them a lot in the past, but I did not know much about what it was that they exactly did. The book states that trial consultants are usually hired by companies who are being sued. These consultants look at data-driven records. Sometimes, a large jury will be a part of a mock jury and will hear a condensed version of the crime. The consultants will pay attention to the reactions and interpretations of the jury. Then, they are able to design juror questonnaires that potential jurors must fill out. A major benefit to using trial consultants is that by using a mock jury, the consultants can inform the attorney of the strengths and weaknesses of their case.
Another thing that I found very interesting was the section on general personality tendencies. Locus of control, belief in a just world, and authoritarianism are the three personality traits that have shown a modest effect on how the jury members view evidence and their decisions on the case. People with an internal locus of control attribute what happens to them as a result of their own behavior. On the other hand, people with an external locus of control see the things that happened to them to be out of their control and atribute it to the environment. The example that the book gives to illustrate this idea was of sexual harrassment with romantic relations between a manager (male) and a lower-level manager(female). Someone with an internal locus of control will see that the female is to blame. Someone with an external locus of control will see the company is to blame. Belief in a just world is the second trait. This is related to the saying "people get what they deserve and deserve what they get." In a female rape case, people who believe in a just world will more likely blame the woman...such as if she wasn't where she was or she shouldn't have been wearing that outfit. The third personality trait is authoritarianism. People who are high in this trait are more likely to convict.
I found the topic of the similarity-leniency hypothesis to be interesting. I decided to more research on this topic. The textbook states that jury members who are similar to the defendant empathize with them more and identify with them. I found an article that discusses the liking-leniency hypothesis. This states that a defendant who is likable will receive a more lenient treatment for the jury members. It was this hypothesis that ultimately led to the similarity-leniency hypothesis. Some defense attorneys are cautious to chose jury members who are similar to the defendant. Based on knowledge of certain ethinicities and common stereotypes, a jury member who is similar to the defendant may be more harsh on them. This is the opposite of what is thought to happen. Another thing that can influence this hypothesis is the personality of the jury.
Before reading chapter 6 on jury selection I knew new very little about it. I briefly learned about it in some of my other classes. In taking these classes I learned that all registered and legal citizens can be selected to be on a jury panel. I knew that jurors who have been selected need to be representative of the community as a whole. Also no jury member can have any biases towards the defendant as this could make for an unfair trial.
After reading this chapter I learned a lot more about the jury selection. The chapter starts off by talking a little bit about the history of jury selections. This history is what I thought was most interesting and surprising about this chapter. In early history juries never needed to be neutral and unbiased. Often the jury and defendant knew each other. You can easily see how this can cause some problems. If the jury had negative feeling towards the defendant they could find him guilty when he may not be deserving of that plea. Also, they could find the defendant innocent even though he should be guilty. Finally, under the six amendment it stated that you have a right to an “impartial” jury. By this it meant that the jury is supposed to be representative of the community. This is also made in law by the Jury and Service Act of 1968 which states that the selected jurors need represent a fair cross-section of the community.
After this the rest of the chapter was really about how jury members are actually selected. A jury pool is compiled which is a list of all the names and addresses of citizens in an area. To be included on the list you must me 18, speak English, be mentally competent and have no felonies. Names are randomly selected from this jury pool and these people can be potential jurors. Jurors who have been selected are known as venire. Finally the venire group comes to the courthouse for questioning. This is where they are asked a variety of questions by the court to see if they are right for the particular case. If they have any biases they won’t be selected. According to the book there are two ways potential jurors can be dismissed which are challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. Challenge for cause basically means that the potential juror has a bias or prejudice that would keep him or her from being impartial. A peremptory challenge is pretty powerful for a lawyer. Here, a lawyer can dismiss a potential juror without giving a reason or asking for the judge’s approval.
In reading through this chapter I found myself wanting to learn more about shadow juries. The book was a little unclear about this so I wanted to do a little more research. After doing some research I found the shadow jurors to be somewhat interesting. Shadow jurors are kind of like a control group in the courtroom. These jurors are often used in high profile cases when there is a lot at stake. They provide insight as to how the case is going from the jury’s perspective. They observe every moment of the trial and give feedback everyday in interviews. In theses interviews they discuss any potential risks during the trial such as what may be confusing to the jury. I think this is a good thing to have as it can keep the court in check and ensure the jurors understand what is happening.
http://juryassociates.com/shadow_juries
Before reading the chapter, I did not know much about jury selection. My role for our trial is a jury member, but I realized that most of the research I have done for our role essays has been about what is expected of a juror in the actual trail and deliberation. I never really took into account how one gets selected to be on the jury. When I was in middle school, my stepdad was selected for jury duty. Because it was so long ago I can’t recall exactly how the process worked. What I do remember is that he got a letter in the mail that said he might be getting a call at certain block of time, and if he did he would have to report for duty. He never got a call, so I wasn’t sure what happened after that point. I also remember that if you do get selected for duty, only a small handful of excuses get you out of it.
The intro to the chapter made it seem like jurors have an overwhelming job with a lot of information to take in and decipher, and that sort of made me nervous for the trail. I was surprised that early juries were made of people who knew the defendant well. I guess it makes sense, but seems so unfair in modern times. Jury selection has four main steps that each shrink the number of potential jurors down until the actual jury is set. The first is the jury pool. A small set of requirements are necessary in order to be in the jury pool; ability to speak English, over 18 years old, mentally competent, and never been convicted of a felony. It is hard to obtain a list this broad and ever-changing, so most courts use voter registration, driver’s license, and telephone lists to fill the jury pool.
Next, a sample is taken from the jury pool, and the selected jurors are contacted and asked to show up at a certain location at a certain time. Those that do show up are put into a group called the venire. I was shocked to learn that the people who do not show up are often let off the hook if enough potential jurors do turn up. It turns out I was wrong about the number of excuses used to get out of jury duty. It seems that there is quite vast amount and variety of them. The voir dire is the final step in determining the actual jury. This is a process in which the attorneys sort of interview the jurors. They use two types of challenges. Challenges for cause are used when the attorneys think that the juror is unable to be impartial. Peremptory challenges are when an attorney dismisses a potential juror without the approval of the judge.
Many attorneys use stereotypes to try and eliminate the jurors that they think will be least advantageous to their side. Most stereotypes, however, can’t predict how a juror will react to the information and evidence that the trial brings. I thought the use of trial consultants was very interesting. They have a sort of mock jury and deliberation to evaluate the jurors and the arguments that could potentially be brought up. I remember learning about the locus of control in my psychology class in high school. If it is internal, they believe that they are in control of what happens to them, but if it is external, they believe that they have little control of what happens to them. Some people believe that this is significant in determining how a person will react to the evidence. I thought the similarity-leniency hypothesis was very logical and important for attorneys to take into consideration when choosing jurors.
I thought the section on using trial consultants was the most interesting. So I decided to look up more information on mock juries and shadow juries. When I typed “Mock and shadow juries” into Google, I was surprised to see that a lot of company names came up. I had no idea that there were actual companies out there dedicated to this kind of work. I just thought that attorneys hired people like social scientists to do the job.
http://www.westlaketrialconsulting.com/services/mock-juries/
http://www.rd-ss.com/rd_services_trial.html
My knowledge of jury selection was learned from a jury duty experience. Before I was chosen for jury duty I recently registered to vote and in the state of Illinois when you register to vote people are randomly put on a list to potentially be used to fill a jury. No everyone on the list will serve on a jury but they are required to show up and wait in the court house until they are guaranteed that they aren’t needed anymore. I had to go to the court house three days out of the week and I didn’t think I was going to be chosen until the last day. The case dealt with a railroad company who built their tracks near a residential area. While building the train tracks land became flooded and destroyed near a particular family’s home. The family owned a lot of land and believed that the railroad company had something to do with their property damage. I would have filled the last slot of the jury but the defendant attorney’s then asked me if I had ever had a problem with water damage on my property that was caused by another individual. I told them about my next door neighbors who drained their water a long a ditch on the far side of my old house. My brother one day played in it and broke out with a very severe skin infection that covered that majority of his body. After I told them that incident I was quickly declined from the jury by the defendants, even after I replied, “No” after they asked me if the incident would cause me to be a biased jury member. I felt that it wasn’t right that they didn’t accept me because of my experience with my neighbors. However, after reading this chapter I realized that they didn’t choose me because even thought I wouldn’t be biased they don’t know that and why take the chance of letting me join the jury if it could negatively affect their position. By them filling a jury spot with a person with no incidents that involve damage to property will only make the case fairer. So eliminating me would give them a better chance in winning the case and a less likely chance of having a biased jury. I feel that after reading the chapter it helped fill in the gaps that I didn’t learn from my experience. The most surprising thing I learned in the chapter was that there was a process in choosing a jury. There are stages that are followed when choosing a jury. The three stages are called: Pools, Venires, and Voir Dire. I thought it was interesting to learn the stage I was removed from was the last one. Also the stereotypes and science to select jurors portion of the reading was surprising to me. Knowing that I went through this process was weird to think about. I feel that I passed the stereotyping portion but they weren’t fond of my story about my little brother.
This PDF file doesn’t have a website but it gives more information on scientific jury selection than the book does. Copy and paste the below information on google and it will take you to the article.
Scientific Jury Selection: History, Practice, and Controversy concept.journals.villanova.edu/article/download/255/219
Chapter 6 talks about assembling a jury, using stereotypes and science to select jurors, the ethics of jury consulting, juror characteristics and attitudes, and an overview of trial procedure.
Today jurors are picked because they are neutral and unbiased towards both parties, but back in the day jurors were decided based on the defendant's neighbors and relatives. The jurors were picked this way because the court thought that they would be able to best decide whether the defendant was guilty by knowing his/her past behaviors. The Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 states that the federal and state courts must assemble juries that constitute a fair cross-section of the community. First there is a pool and from that pool there is a venire. The venire is the group of people that show up to the court house. Many people often don't show up to court shrinking the venire's size. The last stage is called the voir dire. This group of people get asked questions by the attorneys to assess how biased each person is towards the crime.
Lawyers try to figure out which jurors would be detrimental towards their case and which ones would help them out. They try to get rid of the ones that will influence the case in a negative way. Many large companies will use trial consultants to help weed out the bad jurors.
There are three aspects that help determine how a juror will choose a verdict including: locus of control, belief in a just world, and authoritarianism. Locus of control has to do with how people explain what happens to them. Belief in a just world is how strongly people believe in "people get what they deserve and deserve what they get." Authoritarianism is when people have a more conventional view on things and agree more with other srtict individuals. The fact I found most interesting was that accused child molestors and rapists are treated more harshly by female jurors.
http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/jury/std_jury_quest_criminal.pdf
http://www.uscourts.gov/FederalCourts/JuryService.aspx
Prior to reading this chapter, I knew very little information about jury selection. I know the jury consists of 12 people who are randomly chosen. You will get a letter in the mail saying you have been chosen for jury duty and it is required. You must participate in it if you are chosen to do so. A person may not say no to it because that is illegal. If chosen for jury duty, you are allowed to miss work to participate and cannot get fired for it. If for any chance you would have a bias in the case you were chosen to be a jury member for, you will more than likely be exempted from the case. For example, if you were chosen for a rape trial and you may have been raped in the past or been a part of a rape situation, you will more than likely not serve on the jury for that case. This chapter taught me a lot more information about the process of selecting jury members.
I found the beginning chapter discussing the early juries before the juries were chosen to be impartial. I found it very crazy juries were designed to consist of the defendant's neighbors and acquaintances because of their previous dealings with the defendant and knowledge of his or her reputation. I did not know the primary source for identifying eligible jurors is voter registration lists. I figured since I was 18 and considered an adult I had the same chance as anyone else to be chosen for jury duty because I knew it was chosen at random somehow. I am not a registered voter so that makes me less eligible to be chosen for jury duty. I learned the group of prospective jurors whom are required to appear at the courthouse is called the venire. What I found very interesting about the venire is people may not be aggressively pursued for not showing up as long as many others do. If everyone knew this information, I doubt anyone would show up at all. I was always told it was against the law to not show up for jury duty when called for it. The entire concept of voir dire was completely new to me when reading this chapter. I learned voir dire is the series of questions which determines who will serve on the jury and who will not. Voir dire is an interview process in which lawyers are able to remove or challenge potential jurors. I thought a lawyer would be able to remove someone only if there was a serious reason for doing so but learning they can use peremptory challenges, dismissing a juror without approval or reason, I was shocked. I also learned diversity is something strived for during the process of choosing a jury. This is something I had already had an idea of but I did not know they actually strived for this because I never see young people around 18-25 serve on juries in the movies. But that is the movies right? I learned from reading this chapter juries may be chosen using scientific jury selection. I did not know there were trial consultants who pretty much find the perfect people for each side of the case. I think this would cause the jury to be divided and never reach a verdict, but they also cannot determine the people chosen from the data's personalities and what they will ultimately decide in the end. O.J. Simpson's jurors were found using a trial consultant, which I found interesting. When trial consultants are used, they will recruit a mock jury to hear a shortened form of the trial and questioned on their reactions. The consultant may watch the mock jury deliberate and the consultant may discover relationships between juror characteristics and responses to the evidence in cases. I did not know the locus of control was used in the jury selection. Some people's perspective on evidence presented at trial is influenced by their locus of control. some jurors would see the outcome as internal of the person and the others would see reasons due to forces outside of the person such as people in power. What I also found particularly interesting is the amount of questionnaires used in this process. There are many questionnaires which leads me to believe they are what truly make up this process. Even trial consultants use this technique because it gives them a taste of someones personality if they would have a bias towards something or how their attitude is about a law. There was a lot of information given in this chapter regarding jury selections I did not know about.
Through all of the information stated above, I learned a lot of information and my thoughts changed on different things or were shaped in different ways. The most interesting part of this chapter to me was the voir dire process so here are some sites I looked up:
http://www.americanbar.org/newsletter/publications/law_trends_news_practice_area_e_newsletter_home/voirdireprocess.html
This site explains voir dire into some detail in which the book did not exactly give. I found it interesting how it said when the attorney enters the courtroom for this process, he or she will look at who is talking to each other and seems to be friends, who is sitting next to whom and so forth. I did not think that would be such a big deal. It also explains the potential usage of a paralegal during this process to write down names or people in a seating chart, making note of their appearances and so forth to help you determine who you want and also to help to go back to when talking about your decisions. It also describes how the attorney should make a person want to answer the questions and not get defensive with the attorney. You want them to like you but you also need to get the answers to specific questions. This site helped a lot.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-voir-dire.htm
This site goes into explaining how each attorney wants to build a jury which will favor his or her client in the process. It also explains how lawyers can move a strike for cause in order for a jury member to step down from the process because he or she is unsuitable for the case for some sort of reason. This site also states there are 14 jurors selected because 12 sit in on the trial while the other two are alternates in case something were to happen in case.
My knowledge of jury selection was very limited and consisted of little to no real world experience. My knowledge of jury selection was very narrow: you get a letter in the mail that says you have to serve jury duty and you go. I knew you had to miss work and they might pay you if it happened to be a lengthy trial. The only time I got any experience with the jury process was when my parents got their call to serve. My father received his letter and was very furious he was being forced to miss work for jury duty. It seemed more of a hassle than anything. I was taught in school that being called to serve as a juror was every American's duty and they would come find you if you failed to show up. I believed that this was the law and it could not have loop holes, that is until my mother got her letter. I cannot remember how but she got out of her jury duty. Then proceeded to rub it in my father's face how she did not have to serve, teasing him. Regardless, in the end what I previously believed about jury selection was that is was nothing more than a hassle but everyone had to do it at some point in their life. Obviously my level of knowledge has grown since then and I now have a more full view of what exactly is the jury selection process. I now know that it is not so cut and dry. There are many, many reasons to be allowed to miss your jury duty. This also depends upon the type of case and the court it is occurring within. I found many new things interesting about the process however I am asked to choose the one in which most caught my attention. I liked how the jury selection has changed from a trial by peers to an impartial one and learning about that. However, the most interesting thing I have learned was that of the Voir Dire and challenges for cause.
http://criminaldefense.homestead.com/JurySelection.html
Prior to reading this chapter, I only knew a few things about jury selection and how it’s done. I knew there were around twelve jurors that are there for the trial. However I didn’t know that the prosecution and defense were both able to pick out six jurors a piece. Also I knew that if you were in the profession of being a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist your chance of getting called for jury duty is slim to none. This chapter helped me comprehend more on the process behind the jury and how they are selected.
One of the things I learned and found surprising was that original juries were comprised of a defendant’s neighbors and acquaintances, not designed to be neutral and unbiased. This was so because they were hoping that they could find out his/her reputation by having people who knew of them and could very well be credible and have a good feeling of whether or not the defendant could of committed the crime they were brought to court on.
One of the important information I learned in this chapter involved the process of weeding out people who would seem like they’d be a problem for your side of the case, but usually the attorneys are way too much off base when it comes to their reasoning of why they let juries go and stay. Psychology is used in different stages of these processes. In voir dire and onward, the attorneys can use all kinds of clues from the possible jurors, this could include physical looks, the way they go about answering a question or questions, and also they go off the information they receive from the written questionnaires. These tactics can be used to determine whether or not they would favor a certain side. I think that this may be a stretch in determining whether or not certain jurors could lean more towards your side. It all comes down to who delivers the better argument/statements/facts/info, so that all the jurors can hear it all out and determine what they believe to be the right side.
I wanted to do a little more research on the attorneys being able to challenge the juries.
On this website it mentions how the attorneys tend to work for a jury who is very sympathetic to their side, and most likely has been subject to misuse and even abused. This power to challenge and the discretion to use it is extremely important in our justice system.
http://www.crfc.org/americanjury/voir_dire.html
On this website it explains the controversy of the peremptory challenge of where the party is allowed to remove the juror from the panel without giving any hint as to why they did that.
http://www.uchastings.edu/public-law/plri/spr96tex/juryper.html