Recently in Jury System Category

I've noticed many posts about how to get out of Jury duty. With all those comments, the question then becomes, "What are the benefits?" Psychologically, there are many reasons people try to find a way out. They could include the fear of the defendant looking for vengeance against those who were responsible for their incarceration, the responsibility of someone's fate is too great for them, or so on. In select states, a juror could get pay from their employer and pay for jury duty service without loss of vacation time.

Remember though, jury duty should not be about materialistic gains. It should fill an individual with pride in their system, knowing that the system of law can work. It gives a participant a responsibility that can save or condemn a life. It can provide new experiences or insights about our system that cannot be learned in textbooks or television. Remember, one person can make a difference. One person can question the guilt or innocence of the defendant. One person can save a life... or condemn it. The benefit should be knowing that one person can make a positive difference in our society, one individual, or both.

After reading through many of the blog posts on jury selection and jury duty I found a link on Luke's post "It's Your Duty" describing ways to avoid jury duty.  At the top of the list were the words "jury nullification" which linked to another website that I now have bookmarked and find absolutely amazing.

            http://fija.org/  This organization known as the Fully Informed Jury Association has a wealth of information that is very helpful to jurors, and anyone else interested in researching information relating to jury selection and duties.  On their homepage they offer a critical reminder of the true function of all jurors:

            "The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power by the government.  The Constitution guarantees you the right to trial by jury.  This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property.  Jurors can say no to government tyranny by refusing to convict."

ICBFI? It is likely that your thinking WTF in your head right now but when it comes to jury duty it actually makes more sense. The abbreviation ICBFI stands for "I Cannot Be Fair and Impartial".

http://theununifiedcourtsystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/idiots-guide-to-getting-out-of-jury.html 

That is the statement that an attorney at law suggests is the best way in getting out of serving jury duty. The following websites, although they are amusing, are pretty ridiculous and some bluntly obvious.

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Out-of-Jury-Duty

http://ezinearticles.com/?Get-Out-of-Jury-Duty---Find-the-Perfect-Excuse&id=1899538

http://www.fullduplex.org/humor/2007/06/how-to-get-out-of-jury-duty/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/105502/valid_excuses_to_get_out_of_jury_duty.html?cat=17

If you want to take the time and amuse yourself and read all those go ahead but keep in mind that things such as being the president of the U.S. (reference to and earlier post of Obama being chosen) or other positions such as being at war, won't keep most of you average folks from serving your duty.

The statement I cannot be fair and impartial is actually quite simple and works effectively only if it is used at a correct time. It's sort of like saying that you support racism in a case that is prosecuting the KKK. The right timing is key; otherwise the trial lawyers will be onto your little plan and give you back an even more clever response just to keep you.

Let's use a murder trial as an example. A defense attorney is not going to choose you to be on the jury if when they ask everyone if murder can sometimes be justified and you sing out "I CANNOT BE FAIR AND IMPARTIAL because I knew someone that was murdered and all murderers should rot in jail no matter the circumstance... See that? Perfect timing to sing ICBFI even though that person you knew that was murdered was your cousin's best friend neighbors dad.

So the point of not following all the other silly ways to get out of jury duty and to use the ICBFI method, is all about timing your well prepared ICBFI song.

Think, if today you were called for a jury duty what would be going through your mind? Would it be how was I picked out of a whole county, city, or state? What will I even be doing? Will I get in trouble for leaving work or school? Is there any pay that comes with jury duty? If i go through the whole process, what happens in the deliberation? Am i able to talk about the case with others? Is this a criminal or civil case? These are all questions that you might ask yourself along with many others. It is not all that common that a person is called for Jury duty, so when they are it is like a whole new world for them. In most cases they have no idea that to do, how to go about things, and have a head full of so many questions. In that case it is important that a person be educated on what jury duty is, how it works, and what goes on during cases. They should also be educated on how you act while the trial is going on, and how to deliberate the verdict with other jury members.

     Jury duty is a responsibility we have as citizens of the United States of America to comply with. If looked at in a positive way, jury duty can be very educational and sometimes fun.

   This government website is very helpful with those questions. This web page will take you through three steps, 1) How jury service operates 2) The jury selection process 3) The trial process.

   http://www.utcourts.gov/courts/dist/jury/selserve.htm

When thinking about jury selection and the jury process I got thinking about how these lawyers and attorneys use them to their advantage. With this idea in mind I came upon a website where it talks about the art and format of asking jurors questions and how it is important to not only ask well phrased Questions but to make sure these jurors have enough time to think and provide a good elaborate answer. This not only helps the thought process of the juror and gives them insight to what the case is about but also it allows the lawyer to gather information about the types of people that he is going to be presenting his case to. This information about the jurors is important because it unveils some underlying behaiors, attitudes, and  perspectives the jurors might have; and hoe they feel about this particular case.

Example: the defended is going to argue that his client was a victim of wrongful or mistaken identity. He asks jurors the question...have you ever been a victim of mistaken identity? This question does two things: it presents the defendants perspective on the case and it plants the idea in the jurors head a time they had been wrongfully convicted of a crime or another situation promoting empathy for the defendant. Another thing an interviewer needs to do in addition to asking thought provoking questions is to give them enough time to answer the questions.

The author of this website outlines seven steps to making sure you are giving the jurors enough time to think:

1. Ask the question of the entire panel (and tell them how they should respond): "By show of hands, has anyone here ever been wrongfully accused of something?"

2. Show them how to respond: While asking the question, raise your own hand in the air.  (Telling them how to respond and then showing them how to respond will encourage greater responses.)

3. Pause.  Don't rush it.  Mentally count to 10 or so before you even think about saying anything else or moving to another topic.

4. Look 'em in the eyes.  While you're pausing, make eye contact with several jurors and use the power of your eye contact to encourage responses.  Keep an eye out for the ones who look like they'd like to respond, but haven't made up their minds yet.

5. Nobody volunteered?  Pick on someone.  Actually, pick about 3-4 people, from different parts of the room, and ask them directly: "Mrs. Jones, have you ever been wrongfully accused of something?"  By asking them directly, sometimes you'll prompt a better response.  (A good place to start is with the people who looked like they wanted to respond, but didn't raise their hand.)

6. Ask the entire panel again.  Even if no one responds to your individual questions, it's not a waste of time, because you're giving the other jurors time to finish thinking their way through your question.  Now that they've had enough time to finish thinking, ask the entire panel once again, perhaps adding a bit of a challenge to your question: "Really?  No one here has ever been wrongfully accused of anything?"

7. Pause (again).  Look 'em in the eyes (again).  Hopefully, this will prompt any hold-outs into answering the question.  If not, consider rephrasing the question, or moving on to another topic.  At least you'll know that you didn't cut off anyone's thought process and prevent them from answering. 

If you are interested there are more links on this website that elaborate on information regarding questions and answer sessions with jurors and other variables in the process

http://www.trialtheater.com/wordpress/jury-selection/give-jurors-time-to-think-during-jury-selection/

I thought this was a good video to watch. The person who talks is a criminal lawyer and tells about not only his experience going through jury selection but also his personal experience selecting his jury.

It's kind of a lengthy video but it still does a great job on how to make the possible jurors feel comfortable. Usually, jury selection is in the view of the lawyers but it is more focused on the actually jurors. Overall, I thought this was a good video and kind of interesting.

http://www.trialtheater.com/wordpress/jury-selection/video-two-tips-for-better-jury-selection/ 

He is another video (half way down the page) where he says about jury selection and what you should say during a jury selection. It kind of covers the same stuff as the one above but it goes into more detail. Also, it is a little longer than the other video.

http://www.trialtheater.com/wordpress/category/jury-selection/

For my blog about juries, I decided to focus on the challenge rights that attorneys have when selecting a jury and specific cases related to those challenges.

voir dire: is the process of interviewing potential jurors in which judges and attorneys examine their backgrounds and possible biases.

Attorneys are allowed to challenge certain jurors when selecting a jury, which is simply a request to dismiss a potential juror.

peremptory challenge: an attorney can challenge a potential juror without providing a reason

challenge for cause: an attorney must provide a reason when challenging a potential juror, whether it be related to some bias towards the case, acquaintanceship with one of the parties, knowledge about the facts of the case, an obvious prejudice, or an inability to serve such as having a mental disorder. The judge then decides whether or not to dismiss the prospective juror.

I think it is a good idea to give attorneys these challenges.  I think both are necessary because it would not be fair for attorneys to eliminate an unlimited number of potential jurors for no reason.  The challenge for cause keeps attorneys in check and requires them to provide a reason to throw out a juror.  I think it is good that our courts allow attorneys to have these rights and that both exist to keep the attorneys fair and in check.   

Listed below are some cases related to jury selection...

Strauder v. West Virginia (1879): exclusion of potential jurors based solely on race is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause

Batson v. Kentucky (1986): peremptory challenges may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race

J. E. B. v. Alabama ex rel. T. B. (1994): peremptory challenges may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their sex

I agree with the verdicts of these cases.  I do not think jurors should be thrown out based solely on their sex or race.    These cases give everyone an equal opportunity to serve as a juror, or at least through voir dire.

"Alexis De Tocqueville got it right when he noted 150 years ago that America is a country where virtually every issue--the intimate, mundane, significant, complicated, and terrible--eventually makes its way into court. Once there, it is a strange system we have for resolving these problems. A collection of ordinary citizens, who appear to share very little in common, evaluate conflicting versions of historical events as presented by professionally trained, partisan adversaries in the stylized and artificial manner that is the jury trial.  Described this way, it is not difficult to see why so many people have come to question the effectiveness of the way we try cases".  This is the first paragraph from the website.  I think that it really sums up why some people think the jury system doesn't work. 

I found a website that lists the seven reasons why the jury system works.  The article on the website was posed by G. Christopher Ritter.  Ritter is a member of the case manager at the Focal Point.  The Focal Point is a company that develops trial strategies and courtroom presentations for the purpose of making cases easier for judges and jurors to understand. Ritter states that the jury system works for seven reasons and lawyers who understand this will do better in court than those who don't.  Ritter's seven reasons are:

1) The nature of all disputes

2) We have more in common with the jurors than we think

3) Attorney's use stories to educate jurors

4) At trail those stories are repeated three times

5) It requires the essential characters (people who witnessed the crime)

6) Layers can talk directly to the jurors

7) Jurors bring "collective intuition" to the jury process

This article is only one man's reasons for why the jury system work.  It gives you some good reasons why the jury system does work and from there you can make your own decision about it.  I found that this article gave me a new way to look at the jury system and made me think of other reasons why the jury system works and why it doens't work.  To read more on the seven reasons you will need to go to the website, which is:

http://www.articlesbase.com/law-articles/why-the-jury-system-works-642932.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Out-of-Jury-Duty

While searching for something to post about juries for this week I was a little surprised with the results that came up. Regardless what I tied to the word jury, at least a quarter of the sites would be about getting out of jury duty. These sites ranged from the generally oriented wikihow entry I posted above, to forums and state specific entire websites devoted to figuring out ways to avoid this obligation.

While it is technically your civic duty to serve, citizens have no problem swapping secrets to rid themselves of what most people consider a burden. The amount of information available paints a picture that jury duty is something that is looked at with considerable disdain. What is there to motivate you to spend your time and resources to commit to it, especially when considering the only extrinsic motivator is a very small monetary fee? While it is the law you must attend your summons, from what I have heard from peers, and older adults, is that skipping out on it is not a big deal and often nothing will be done about it, regardless of the fines in place. How did these attitudes get put into place?

It seems to me that avoiding civic duty, and breaking the law would be detrimental to mental health, at least for anyone who has good morals and values. Though it is understandable that it is not possible for many people to meet this obligation, the pure hatred for the process is very evident in many of the get out of jury duty forums.  Here's an excerpt from a forum detailing how a candidate actually was directly aggressive about getting out of his obligation.

"After sitting through jury selection and finding myself being "ordered" to return the following day to serve on a jury I had this conversation with the judge:
"I believe it is wrong for you to hold me here against my will when I have committed no crime."
"You're not being held here, you're serving on a jury."
"Well it is against my will to do so if you're forcing me to do this then you are holding me here against my will."
"Juror number 12, you're excused.""

This brings up a couple of questions, would this happen with any judge? Is it not true that you can't be held against your will regardless of situation unless you are put under arrest?

There are also sites out there that have these exact same questions about why people avoid the duty and have a lot of interesting comments on the forum that really gives you some insight into the mindset of people.

http://www.squidoo.com/jurydutywithhonor

http://www.dcba.org/brief/octissue/1999/art21099.htm

I found this article written by lawyer Patricia F. Kuehn, J.D., discussing various tips that she believes are helpful for a trial lawyer to select a jury. She argues that the jury selection process is one of the most crucial components of winning or losing the case. She says that since Voir Dire is the only time a lawyer is able to interact with the jury, a lawyer should take advantage of this opportunity.

The first thing that Kuehn suggests is that you take in as much information about the potential jurors the moment they walk in the door. It is during this time to take in mannerisms and how they present themselves. Also notice things such as clothing, demeanor, and how they interact with other jurors.  It is also important to control your own mannerisms and speech, as the jurors will also be watching you.

The next step that Kuehn suggests is to be very careful with what type of questions you ask the jurors. You have to craft your questions in a way that you get the response you want without coming off as threatening She suggests starting out with open-ended questions about demographics, jobs, and things of that nature. This leads the jurors into feeling comfortable with you.

The last thing that Kuehn suggests is to use the court case of Batson vs Kentucky to your advantage. This court case found that using a peremptory challenge to discriminate against minorities was against the 14^th Amendments and that lawyers should raise a Batson objection if they feel that their opponent is challenging minorities.

She wraps up her article by again stating that the jury selection process should be paid as much detail as any other part of the trial.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9906EEDC143FE433A25752C0A9649C946097D6CF

(abstract of the article)

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9906EEDC143FE433A25752C0A9649C946097D6CF

(the entire article)

The above article is from 1901, but I thought it was interesting to see the types of problems they were having in the legal system in the past. It discusses the opposition by a former judge concerning jury selection for trials in New Jersey. Former Judge Thomas Henry, challenged the jury selection during the Quarter Sessions. His challenge was overturned by Judge Skinner, so he took his challenge to the Court of Error and Appeals.

"Mr. Henry says the Constables about the court have friends whom they desire to have placed on the jury list, and the Sheriff, to be accomodating, uses the names of these friends. Some of these constables are attached to the Prosecutor's office..."

Mr. Henry argued that the chosen jurors were possibly inclined to favor the prosecution's side, because that's how they were chosen, and resulted in the money received for their services to society.

Mr. Henry asked the judge in the current case he was defending, if he would allow a jury to be selected from a list of the defense's friends, and of course the judge denied this request. Mr. Henry made a valid point that many other attorneys and judges began to agree with-the method for jury selection needed to be reformed.

"We're really getting an opportunity to find out where the skeletons are hidden."

 - Marshall Hennington, clinical psychologist

The follow short article comes from a newser,com online article source (it was short so I just pasted into onto here). It explains how technology is now influencing the selection of jurors. This indeed isn't shocking to me, but instead shows how our world demands that one keeps up with technology. The article reads...

"Get called for jury duty these days, and you can expect attorneys to know a lot more about you than they let on. Trial consultants who used to specialize in legwork--visiting neighbors and friends to gather clues to potential jurors' views--are now expert Web surfers, tracing things like spending habits, campaign contributions, letters to the editor--not to speak of the personal info on your Facebook page, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"If a juror has an attitude about something, I want to know what that is," says one veteran jury researcher. Both sides can be counted on to be doing the research, says the head of a Dallas-based research firm: Anyone who neglects Internet searches "is bordering on malpractice." "

I personally think that this technology could be dangerous when selectiong jurors. I want to point out that I think it is a smart move to gather information from sources like blogs and facebook. However, I would like to look into the psychological aspect of it. I can remember back when I was really young and the "cool" thing to was to write blog posts on your msn profile after a day at school. You would ramble about things you did. However, half of these things were half as awesome as I made them sound. I would even lie about doing certain things or having certain things. Like self-report data, I feel like people on the internet have the ability to portray themselves to the world as they wish to be seen. Like self report data, this can be very influenced by social desirability bias. I feel that facebook even has a strong push to portray yourself in a socially acceptable way. So as lawyers look into jury selection through the eyes of the internet I feel that they must be careful that how a person may portray themselves online may or may not be a very good judgment of the type of person they really are. I feel like technology can be a great thing, but can also cause some trouble some days too. The following link brings you to a trial that was delayed due to a facebook message.

http://www.digtriad.com/news/local_state/article.aspx?storyid=138378

I enjoyed doing research on jury selection because I've never been asked to serve on a jury, so I was always curious about the process you have to go through. As it turns out, it's pretty time consuming. I've provided a link that has information on the jury selection process.

Also, when one of my friends was called to jury duty, she asked me how to get out of it. Just in case any of you decide you want to get out of jury duty, I also found a website that gives 20 effective ways to avoid jury duty. Some of them are humorous, other ones are more serious. So have fun reading those!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-reluctant-jurors15-2010feb15,0,824472.story

"As more people seek dismissal for financial hardship, their claims face much tighter scrutiny. In one case the jury pool was so rebellious and 'scary' that both sides agreed to let the judge decide."

I found this game kind of interesting. At first you are asked to pick a case that you want to participate in, then it gives a short description of what is going on, then you pick if you want to be the prosecutor or the defense. The game then has a list of 20 jurors and gives some information about each one. You select which 12 of the 20 you would think would benefit your case the most. After you do this you are given a score and it also gives you the reasons why or why not each juror you selected would be beneficial to the case. I thought the game was interesting because it shows you to a certain extent what both sides go through in the juror selection process.

http://www.texaslre.org/jury_game.html 

http://w3.uchastings.edu/plri/spr96tex/jurysiz.html

I found an article from the Public Law Research Institute written by Margo Hunter that discusses the debate over reducing jury size. The people that are in favor of reducing the size from 12 members to anything over 6, argue that money could be saved from the Judicial Budget. Those against the reduction argue that the smaller size wouldn't save a large enough amount of money to make it worth doing.

Those against the reduction also provide research saying that the decreased jury size doesn't give a fair representation of the community. The smaller jury size doesn't have a fair minority representation, either. They also say that the deliberation time for 6 and 12 member juries is about the same amount of time. Research by the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States report that, 

"Twelve person juries are more stable and deliberative.

Larger juries were more representative of the interests of minorities than six-person juries.

Although the monetary savings of using smaller juries were significant, these savings were small when compared to the overall judiciary budget.

The reduction in court time from using six-person juries was not that substantial.

As a result of these findings, the Committee concluded that the savings did not compensate for the decrease in stability and the affects on jury community representation."

The son of the late notorious John Gotti Sr. Junior gets racketeeting charges droped after the prosectuion fails to convince the jury that Junior is guilty.  Four failed trials and he is a free man.  The main question that comes to my mind is the idea from old mobseter movies, when the mob always manages to get to some of the jury members and threatens their families lives if they don't go their way.  Now the fact that they tried to prosecute him with four different juries and failed only goes further to support my assumption.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/13/new.york.feds.gotti/index.html?iref=allsearch