Voir Dire, Part I

My lack of posting is not the result of being impaneled on a jury; rather, after loosing two days down at the county courthouse, I have been playing catch-up. I did however get to sit through voir dire (the process through which attorneys and judges choose a jury from a pool of individuals) for two trials, one a murder trial and the other a drug possession trial. More than being a distraction from law school, my two days were very educational. I learned a lot by watching how the attorneys handle the pool of potential jurors, and in addition, I learned a lot about the cross section of my community that was randomly pulled for jury duty. I will try and sum up my observations in the next couple of posts:

First, more people than you would think have been victims of a violent crime. 65 people were called for the first trial, a murder/ robbery case. Around 20 people were released right off the bat because of hardship. Most of those individuals either had trips planned during the next three weeks (or so they said) or were small business people/ commissioned salespeople whose livelihood would be greatly affected by missing three weeks of work. From the 45 or so who remained, at lease five had had a gun pointed to their head at some point in there life. When one juror was asked, she replied "which time. . .I have had a rough life." The attorneys were asking these questions because there was a gun involved in the case. The former cop sitting in front of me described multiple occasion of looking down a barrel, and one tall bearded fellow had been an environmental activist who pissed off some loggers. Several others relayed their experiences in private, but this list only included those involved in gun crimes. There were others who had been kidnapped, beaten, robbed, held for ransom, etc. I must have led a sheltered life. I understand that this supposedly random section of society did not include those who had already found their way out of jury duty, but I think more people than we normally think have been victims of crime.

more to come. . .