Win Your Case During Jury Selection | Atlanta DUI Lawyer
The most important part of any trial is selecting jurors for a case. After all, jurors are the people that will decide whether you will be found guilty or not guilty. They are the decision makers. Most likely, this will the first and only time the jury members will be in this situation. Most have never been in a courtroom before and have very little if any experience with the legal system.
This is not a bad thing. It gives your lawyer the opportunity to teach and persuade an open minded group of people.
Let me tell you a story about how I learned to select a jury:
My first jury trial...I was law student with a provision law license that allowed me to practice law as long I was under the supervision of another lawyer.
At the time I was working at a prosecutor's office in Virginia. The supervising lawyer had a trial coming up and asked me to handle the case. The facts were very much in our my favor. It was a case that would have been difficult to loose. A great first trial for a young lawyer.
Surprisingly, no one ever told me how to select a jury. There were no courses in a law school that were even close to touching on the topic. The only experience with jury selection I had was from watching a few other lawyers.
I followed their lead and coped questions that I had seen them ask. To me the questions seemed to make sense and seemed very helpful.
I asked common questions such as:
"Where do you live"
"What do you do for work"
"Do you know anyone that has ever been arrested before"
I continued on with this practice for years, asking the same questions that all the other lawyers asked. It was not until years later that I discovered I had been doing it all wrong. I was missing the opportunity to win my case during jury selection.
I was using my life experiences and assuming that if potential jurors with certain characteristics had similar beliefs and thought processes. For instance, if a juror was a nurse, I would assume the person was compassionate and would feel sorry for the defendant. If a person was an engineer, I would assume the person was very analytical and would require a lot more than just circumstantial evidence. This was the wrong way of thinking. Similar individuals do not always think the same. Some nurses are republican, some are democratic. Some nurses like Coke, some like Pepsi. Choosing a jury by guessing their thought process was completely wrong.
The second problem was, I missed the opportunity to personally connect with jurors. I should have been spending time building up my credibility so they would consider me to be their trusted leader and so they would believe and consider the case I was presenting.
I have since then developed a new approach to jury selection. It is focused on teaching the jury defenses to my case. Asking them to consider discuss their decision making in hypothetical situations that relate to my case. This allows me to discover the potential jurors that are more likely to side with my case. I also focus on engagement and revealing my own personality to build a relationship.
By selecting a jury the right way, your lawyer gain a substantial advantage in any jury trial. If you will be challenging your case at a trial, make sure your lawyer is choosing your jury the right way and not like all the other lawyers.
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