Jury Focus groups
Jury consultants have the
ability to hire groups of randomly selected citizens who reflect
ordinary prospective jurors, often from groups known to be either
prosecution or defense oriented.
The attorney who has hired them will
then give an opening statement of his or her case (and/or some of the
issues in the case) while other attorneys on the team will give the
opening statement or position for the opposition. A two-way mirror is
often used to monitor the jurors' reactions to the presentations.
Thereafter, all hired jurors are divided by groups of 12 and asked to
deliberate.
Lawyers
Their deliberations are often filmed
behind two-way mirrors so the attorneys can watch and evaluate. While
the actual outcome of their vote may not be correlated to the real
trial, nevertheless lessons can be learned.
For example, what if during
the focus group deliberations in a murder case one of the jurors stated,
"The evidence showed that the victim was a drug user, therefore she
probably would have died sooner or later anyway because of her drug
involvement" and was not willing to convict the defendant?
At the start of the real trial, an
attorney for the prosecution could, during the voir dire, make
prospective jurors commit that they would not hold that fact against
the victim, or for that matter, the prosecutors, in their
deliberations. Therefore, focus groups help narrow down the
attorneys understanding of possible controversial issues before
trial. Unless the court permits prospective jurors to be questioned
either by questionnaire or during the voir dire about the issues
surfacing from the focus groups, such exercises will have little
value other than perhaps rehearsing ones presentation. Time might be
better spent, however, gathering the evidence and preparing
witnesses.
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