Jury Selection
Serving on a jury is part of every person's civic duty. A jury trial is the legal process where a group of peers makes a decision about a court case instead of allowing a judge to make the decision. According to the Constitution of the United States, everyone has the right to choose a trial by jury or a trial by judge.
A trial by jury requires the jury members to determine the case based on facts presented at the trial. Trials by judge usually require the judge to make a determination based upon question of law, or previous rulings. When a jury trial commences, there is still a judge sitting on the bench who runs the courtroom and determines the sentence when necessary.
Selecting a jury starts with a general selection from available citizens who have registered to vote, paid taxes, are licensed drivers, or have public utility accounts. These individuals on the master jury list are notified by mail. Some court systems gather their jury pool through a relatively small roll of people and others gather a jury pool from several lists.
Prospective jurors can be exempted from jury service for several reasons, such as someone who has a job as a doctor, a police officer, or a firefighter. Jobs of that sort are deemed unique to the community and it is assumed the community cannot survive with those people gone from their posts for long periods. Other reasons a person could be exempted from jury duty would be people with small children to care for, or perhaps for religious reasons. If a person has had legal training, they could be exempted for that because it might be that they are potentially influential to the other jurors.
Once the overall pool of jurors is selected, the process of voir dire begins. Voir dire is a process where questions are asked of prospective jurors by the prosecution and the defense lawyers or in some jurisdictions, the judge asks the questions. The jurors are eliminated for various reasons, such as if one of the jurors has the same occupation as the victim or the defendant. In the U.S., if either the prosecuting or the defense lawyer excludes a prospective juror that is a member of a minority race or gender, they must show that the reason was not for race or gender bias.
Depending upon the country in which you live, the process of jury selection is either easy or difficult. In England, for example, the question asked of potential jurors is simply whether or not they can give a fair hearing, and the defendant has only a restricted amount of challenge. In the United States, the questions posed to a potential jurist are probing and invasive, proving that the U.S. has a more in-depth process of voir dire than most any other country.
There is a common practice of expert jury selection that is controversial, but has not proven to be very effective. Expert jury selection is the process by which the prosecutor and/or defense attorneys pay an expert to help them select the best jurors for a trial by asking certain questions or by their "feel" for prospective jurors.