"Making" the Right Jury

It's often asked whether there are sure-fire tricks to "picking the right juror."

First, it's important to keep in mind that you rarely "pick" anyone - the best you can do is eliminate the worst potential jurors. But if you can't always pick the "right" juror, there are opportunities to educate the jurors you get.

Consider this: A defense lawyer represented a corporate client who had taken a beating in the local press over the case. Worse, the judge refused a venue change, even though nearly every juror on the panel was familiar with the press' accounts.

After the lawyer used much of his allotted time to expose special biases among the jurors, he shifted his questioning from questions designed to expose and eliminate to questions designed to educate those who would ultimately serve.

"Who thinks there was a rush to judgment in the Duke Lacrosse case - I mean by the media?"

Nearly every hand on the panel went up.

The lawyer continued, "And who thinks that a lot of opinions about those three boys changed once the defense finally put forward its case - meaning what the media had originally written wasn't fair, or was at least incomplete?"

Again, nearly every hand was raised.

In the end, the lawyer couldn't "pick" the right jury, so he "made" it the right jury.