Selecting a Jury

As I sat in court in May and again in October, selecting my seventh and eighth juries for trials, I thought a bit about the process and how odd it must seem to someone who is called for jury duty.  I have actually had jury duty many times and even sat on a jury.  I know that when you are called for jury duty, you watch a video, but I thought I'd give a little bit of insight into what goes on during jury selection.

First, the lawyers receive a copy of the form that you fill out when you arrive for jury duty.  It contains some basic information such as where you live and work, your spouse's job, interactions with the legal system, age and how much education you have had. We get a chance to review those papers before you are chosen for jury duty.

After asking questions of the pool as a whole, the judge will start to "fill the box".  There are two general ways of doing this.  Some judges like to question each and every potential juror to make sure that they are unbiased and able to serve.  One judge shared with the attorneys that he feels that when you speak to a juror and ask them to serve, they are more likely to do so.  Other jurors will put the required number of jurors in the box and then will call up jurors who answered one of the general questions of for whom a lawyer has a question.  In either event, the lawyers end up huddled around the judge.  You may wonder what they are doing.  In all likelihood, they are discussing one or more of the jurors sitting in the jury box.

When your number is called to sit in the jury box, there are a few things that can happen.  If the judge is speaking people before they are seating in the box, then the prospective juror can explain his or her answer to any question and lawyers are given the opportunity then to raise any issues or concerns they have about that juror.  Ultimately, you can either be excused from jury duty by the court or by the lawyers.  The court will excuse a juror for cause -- perhaps there is a language issue, where the juror cannot fully understand English, perhaps the juror knows one of the parties or one of the attorneys or perhaps the juror has some other connection to the facts of the case that make it so he or she cannot be objective.  These are some of the reasons, that the court decides someone is not able to sit on that jury.

Attorneys also get what are called peremptory challenges. These challenges allow attorneys to remove people from the jury any reason or perhaps even no reason, so long as it is not for a discriminatory reason.  For example, the attorney may decide that due to the nature of the case, he or she feels that it would be better if tradespeople (plumbers, electricians, etc.) were not on the jury.  An attorney can use a challenge to remove people of those professions from the jury.  An attorney can remove someone because of where they live or their education level.  You will not know why you are not hearing the case as a juror -- you will just know that you are not sitting on that jury.

Hopefully, this post gives you some insight into what is going on during jury selection the next time you are called for jury duty.

Epilogue:  I wrote this article last week not knowing that today, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a 30 year old case involving peremptory challenges.  Apparently, 20 years after the case was tried, the defendant's attorneys obtained a copy of the prosecutor's notes from the jury from a Freedom of Information Act request (or the equivalent under Georgia law).   This case highlights the problems with peremptory challenges when it is used for discriminatory reasons.