PT10M10S
“Today, I wanted to touch on some issues that we see in voir dire, that's the jury selection process at trial. If you watched our previous video about the trial process and kind of what happens, you heard me touch a little bit about jury selection, but I really wanna talk to you about differences in misdemeanor versus felony voir dire processes and what you can expect.”
“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 I always like to make sure juries understand is when we first get up there, my client's innocent. When the DA is questioning people, my client's innocent. When the DA is done, my client is still innocent. My client is innocent all the way until the jury walks back into the room and starts deliberations.”
“if they then deliberate during that process and determine that the facts have shown that they are guilty fine, then we have a guilty verdict, but up until that point the jury actually decides that they're guilty, my client is innocent the entire way through and the law backs that up.”
“With the voir dire process, or jury selection process, in misdemeanor cases you are allowed a panel of six jurors. In a felony case you are allowed a panel of 12. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the case, and depending on how long the case is gonna go, you'll actually get more than six or 12 people.”
“let's say you have an assault case, that's gonna go on a couple of days, a lot of the times the judges will allow an alternate juror to be placed with the jury as well. So you actually have 13 people sitting in the box but only 12 of them are gonna be jurors. The alternate is the person that, inevitably something always comes up when you have 12 different people, someone has child care issues, there's a death in the family someone's car breaks down and so you need to make sure that you have someone that can fill in for them if that happens, so that we don't have to do the whole process all over again.”
“During the voir dire process, what happens is the DA gets to get up and question jurors about their background, about their history, about things they may know about the case, anything that they want to question on that's relevant to this case, to see whether or not they have any issues that come up where they think that the juror either is good or bad for their side. Then the defense gets to do that. A lot of the times, what I'll do is, I'll tailor specifically to whether someone has a specific motive or bias, potentially against my client. Unfortunately, a lot of times things come up where you need to make sure people don't have any racial biases, make sure people don't have any gender biases, and you also have to see if they have any personal experience with the type of crime that's charged, to see whether or not that's gonna have an impact on their deliberations.”
“In felony world, generally here in Colorado what we have, is we have jury questionnaires, that when the jurors come in, they actually go to a separate room downstairs and they are talked to by the jury commissioner and then they're divided up randomly to go to different court rooms. If someone is sent to one of the felony divisions that has a jury questionnaire, those potential jurors, so let's say there's 40 to 60 of them, they're given this packet that the defense attorney and the DA have made together before trial, gone over and everything and they give it to the jurors and the jurors have to sit there and fill out this questionnaire. The questionnaire asks basic demographic information, like your age, your background, where you went to school, what kind of degrees you have, what your views are on law enforcement, what your views are on general things like the charges, whether you've ever been accused of a crime, whether you've ever been a victim or a witness in a crime, it kind of goes through that process.”
“This doesn't normally happen in misdemeanor cases but it's very, very frequently happening in our felony cases here in El Paso County and throughout Colorado.”
“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.”
“Peremptory challenges are interesting. Each side has a certain number. In felony cases usually each side has about six or so. Where each side gets to kick someone off the potential jury panel and doesn't have to say why. As long as it is not for a racial reason or a gender bias reason, you can't do it for those types of reasons but you can do it because you didn't like some answers that they gave or I've even seen lawyers say well that person was looking at me mean, so I'm gonna kick them off. There are all kinds of reasons lawyers use peremptory challenges but you go back and forth. So the DA gets to preempt someone off the jury and then the defense does and it goes back and forth back and forth until each has exercised all of their challenges and then whoever is left in the box are the happy, lucky winners of the jury selection process.”
“If you are watching this video and you are looking for ways to get out of jury service, I will tell you right now, that's not a great one because we can usually see through that. how to get out of jury service, not really, that's a terrible idea, but kind of tips and tricks and things that we often see.”
“even though I believe it's the most important process of trial, it's not something that people generally know that much about.”
“when we first get up there, my client's innocent. When the DA is questioning people, my client's innocent. When the DA is done, my client is still innocent. My client is innocent all the way until the jury walks back into the room and starts deliberations.”
“in misdemeanor cases you are allowed a panel of six jurors. In a felony case you are allowed a panel of 12.”
“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.”
“We want people more in the middle. People who are able to hear everything impartially.”
“If you've been summoned for a jury I may be able to answer questions for you. I just can't influence you in any way that's gonna mess with your ability to be fair and impartial during this process.”