Jury Selection

Definition of Jury Selection

Jury selection is the process of choosing a petit jury of independent fact finders from a pool of venire members for a criminal or civil trial. Potential jurors are subjected to a system of examination known as voir dire, which allows judges and attorneys to obtain information about individual venire members. During voir dire, the judge and attorneys pose questions to individual jurors and the panel as a whole. Although the term jury selection gives the impression that the people are selected to remain seated on the jury, the process actually involves removing prospective jurors for a number of reasons. The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives defendants the right to be tried by an impartial jury. To fulfill the requirement of impartiality, jurors who harbor biases or cannot be fair to both sides are excluded from the jury through challenges. Individual venire members certainly have various expectations, beliefs, and experiences, but the legal system requires that members of the jury agree to set aside any preexisting biases and decide the case solely on the evidence. Although the Sixth Amendment states that jurors must be chosen from a representative cross-section of the community, this does not mean that the petit jury is representative of the community once the jury selection is finished. However, there are rules in place to protect against discrimination in the jury selection process, such as the Jury Selection and Services Act of 1968, which was created to ensure nondiscrimination in federal jury selection and services.

During jury selection, there are two types of challenges that attorneys can use to remove venire persons from the jury: challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. A challenge for cause is a request to remove a potential juror when there is reason to believe that he or she cannot serve as an impartial juror. When challenges for cause were first introduced, very few circumstances warranted their use. Only jurors who were related to the defendant by blood or marriage or those who possessed an economic interest in the case were excused for cause. Apart from those reasons, a juror could not to be removed from the jury for cause. In 1911, the Sixth Amendment was codified, and it provided both parties the right to challenge jurors for cause. Currently, the challenge for cause may be used to exclude prospective jurors who possess biases and are unable to follow the law in a given case. In addition, most states now acknowledge that potential jurors may be challenged for cause if they have a relationship with anyone involved in the trial, if the juror has prior experience with a similar case, or if an obvious bias or disability exists that would warrant removal. Judges are usually in charge of exercising the challenges for cause and striking out those people who appear to have a conflict with the case that cannot be corrected through juror rehabilitation.

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