Fair and Impartial Jury

“In a criminal trial, either at a misdemeanor or felony level every single trial that you have that is put before a jury, you are allowed to question the jurors to see whether they are a good fit to sit on the jury panel. What happens during this process is both the DAs and the defense attorneys get to ask questions of the jurors to see whether or not they have any hidden biases, not even hidden, but any issues in their past that would substantially affect their ability to be fair and impartial jurors.”

“For example, let's say that you have someone who, one of their family members was hit in a drunk driving accident and killed, and it happened very recently and they are having a lot of emotional reactions to that. Now if you're there and you're having a DUI trial, where you have for example, if my client has been accused of driving while under the influence of alcohol, I'm not gonna want someone who, number one, just for the sake of being humane, you don't want to put someone through that process and make them hear all this when it's so fresh and raw in their minds. The other thing is, you don't want someone sitting on your jury who's not gonna be able to see the actual facts of this specific case.”

“What we're looking for as a defense team is actually the same thing that the DAs are looking for, generally speaking. We're looking for people who are fair, people who can sit and listen to all the evidence and people who can be impartial.”

“What the purpose and goal of voir dire is to make sure that you get a jury that is fair and impartial and going to be able to hear this case fully and completely and make sure that we have people that are fair to both sides. What I mean by fair to both sides is everyone has an opinion, everyone has something that they feel passionately about, some people are gonna be more prone to be kinder to defendants in cases, to understand their situation, some people are gonna be more focused on convictions, appreciating the cops and their jobs and the work that they do and they're gonna lean a little bit more towards that side of things. We want people more in the middle. People who are able to hear everything impartially.”

“As part of this process, we have what are called challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. Challenges for cause are if someone gets up and says there's no way I can be impartial, I completely believe if someone's sitting there, they are guilty of the crime charged, obviously that person is not gonna be fair and impartial. The DA is not allowed to keep them on because that person has expressed a complete disregard for the criminal justice process, and we can challenge them for cause.”