Jury Selection

Before a jury trial begins, attorneys must select a jury from a panel of community members who have reported for jury duty. Rather than choosing jurors to sit on the jury, attorneys choose people to exclude from the jury. The attorneys may excuse anyone who exhibits demonstrable bias that would interfere with his or her ability to serve as a juror. Attorneys are also given a limited number of challenges that they may exercise for any reason except an attempt to exclude members of certain identifiable groups. When attorneys make their decisions to exclude potential jurors based on intuition or experience, the process is known as traditional jury selection. Scientific jury selection refers to the process where attorneys rely on social science surveys of community ...