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The American Society of Trial Consultants has published my Sixteen Simple Rules for Better Jury Selection in its online newsletter, The Jury Expert, along with responses from several jury consultants. Read the rules and responses here.
Mark Bennett | September 10, 2009
The last rule for right now (it is an evolving list). . . . I’ve talked about how the jury panel is a group and the jury is a group. Why? Because people like to be in groups. Most people will, given a choice between being in a big group and being in a small [...]
Mark Bennett | September 10, 2009
If the rules were in some particular order, this would have received much higher ranking. Simple Rule 15: The Bat Rule: Ping, then listen. Or fail. Because bats, you know, use echolocation: ping! and detect food and obstacles by the signal that bounces back. A bat that doesn’t ping doesn’t eat, but neither does a [...]
Mark Bennett | September 10, 2009
Remember the scene near the end of To Kill a Mocking Bird in which Atticus Finch, having lost the case, wearily packs up his things to leave the courtroom? As he’s preparing to leave, the blacks in the gallery stand up for him; Reverend Sykes tells Scout, “Miss Jean Louise? Miss Jean Louise, stand up! [...]
Mark Bennett | September 10, 2009
In Simple Rule 12: The Field Trip Rule, I talked about how the jury panel is a group, and you have to stay with the group. This group has sixty heads and sixty bodies, each one of which is throwing off communications cues every second. It is not possible for one lawyer, talking to sixty [...]
Mark Bennett | September 10, 2009
In Simple Rule 2: The Blind Date Rule, I pointed out that the 60 potential jurors, by the time they reach the courtroom, are no longer strangers to each other; they have formed a group. When you get up to talk to them, what’s your relationship to the group? You’re an outsider. You are not [...]
Mark Bennett | September 8, 2009
Back to our originally-scheduled program: So you’re in jury selection, and you want to get the jurors talking about the things that maybe they’re not used to discussing in front of 60 near-strangers. What do you do? Well, everyone knows The Playing Doctor Rule: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, right? That’s [...]
Mark Bennett | August 31, 2009
I want to make it clear that I don’t do foolish things like play beer pong or run marathons. But I draw inspiration from the foolish things that other people do. So the next Simple Rule for Better Jury Selection is The Marathon Rule, to wit: Save something for the end. There’s the possibility that, [...]
Mark Bennett | August 31, 2009
In Beer Pong, The ball is always in play. If the ball hits the floor, ceiling, wall or even leaves the room it can still be, and should be, hit back in the direction of the table. So it is in jury selection, except that “the ball” is the conversation and “the table” is the [...]
Mark Bennett | August 29, 2009
Jury selection is not only—nor even mostly—about selecting (or deselecting) jurors. If you use voir dire simply to find the jurors whom you want to strike, you're missing out on most of the value of jury selection. These rules will help you anyway.
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