Jury selection is the most important part of a criminal trial . Jury selection is when the attorneys question jurors on their qualifications and if they can be fair and unbiased jurors. Each attorney has eight peremptory challenges in a felony case under Tennessee law. A peremptory challenge allows a lawyer to strike a potential
Is an Older Juror More Liklely to Convict ?
Racial Bias During Jury Selection
The case of a former FBI agent convicted of wire and bankruptcy fraud is being remanded to the Federal District Court here in Nashville to make a ruling on racial bias during jury selection. Darin McAllister was convicted in 2010. However , the prosecutor used two of his peremptory challenges to excuse to black jurors. The first juror was excused because of a criminal conviction. In the case of the second black juror that was excused , the court did not make any findings of as to whether McAllister established the existence of purposeful race discrimination in the selection of his jury.
In Batson v. Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the defendant that the state will not exclude members of the defendant’s race from the jury venire on account of race, or on the false assumption that members of the defendant’s race , as a group are not qualified to serve as jurors.
Embrace The Gifts The Jurors Give You
One of the jury selection concepts I was taught at the Trial Lawyers College was to embrace the gifts the jurors gave you . I did not fully understand the concept during the lecture. However , the light bulb came on once I saw it in action.
I was sitting in the courtroom of the Cheatham
Jury Selection In Criminal Trials
Scott Greenfield writer of Simple Justice posted about an issue on jury selection which is the most crucial part of a trial. The Ohio Supreme Court reversed a homicide conviction because the trial judge refused to dismiss a deaf juror from the panel for cause in State v. Speer.The basic facts were that the