09 June 2009
U.S. Courts Form Juries to Maintain Impartiality
Washington — In the U.S. criminal justice system, the opinions of 12 citizens play a crucial role.
The panel of citizens observes the trial, then deliberates on whether the accused is guilty. To be on the panel, commonly known as the jury, U.S. citizens are selected and screened through a process known as voir dire. Paula Hannaford-Agor, director of the Center for Jury Studies in Williamsburg, Virginia, translates the 14th-century French law term as “to see, to speak.”
During the voir dire process, jurors are questioned by both the prosecution lawyers and defense lawyers in front of the judge of the case, to evaluate “their ability to be fair and impartial as a matter of law.” According to Hannaford-Agor, the U.S. justice system holds the presumption that lawyers are “the best in position to know” of situations arising in a trial that lead to bias or prejudice within a jury.
If the trial’s judge finds that a potential juror is not able to serve fairly and impartially, the judge can remove the candidate from consideration. Hannaford-Agor said these “strike for causes” are usually based on legal definitions such as a relationship to an active member in the trial, financial interest in the outcome of the case, or a clear indication of bias or prejudice. A judge can strike for cause any number of jurors, but rarely are more than 10 percent of the potential jurors struck, Hannaford-Agor said.
Additionally, lawyers have the option to exercise a “peremptory strike,” which allows them to remove potential jurors for any reason or no reason at all. Before voir dire begins, the judge sets a limit to how many peremptory strikes lawyers can use.
The tactics used in the cross-examination of the potential jurors rely on the ability of the lawyer to ask the right questions and, in a way, lead the individual into revealing something that he or she may not want to reveal. Lawyers are responsible for the de-selection of “jurors who are not able or willing to consider the lawyer’s side of the dispute,” Hannaford-Agor said, rather than the selection of those who can. Lawyers look for jurors who may have life experiences that could lead to prejudices against the lawyer’s client or witnesses.
Bias and prejudice cannot be eliminated when different people come together on a single decision, but the lawyers strive to minimize these factors. Impartiality, as Hannaford-Agor defines it, verifies that the attitudes of the jurors are “not so domineering” that the lawyers’ arguments and presentation of evidence are not considered.
The voir dire process can take from under an hour to a number of days, depending on the severity of the issues and incidents. Besides the case’s severity, the location of the case affects the timeline of the process, varying from state to state.
Regarding serious cases like first degree murder, where the federal government and many states can impose the death penalty, Hannaford-Agor said, “only persons who are morally capable of considering the imposition of a death” are qualified to serve on the jury. Those qualified go through an extensive voir dire process, determining if the jurors have moral or religious beliefs that would not allow them to sentence someone to death. This process does the same for those who believe in the opposite, that all capital cases should end with the defendant’s death.
About 2 percent of all American cases are solved with a jury trial, Hannaford-Agor said.
