Monday, August 10, 2015

Voir Dire

This does not look to be a matter of exercising fully-informed jury rights -- the place for that was in reaching the verdict. [More]

This seems more like a matter of lying to keep from being disqualified as a juror -- assuming gross prosecutorial incompetence is not to blame.  I can't believe -- in order to accept a juror -- the prosecutor didn't ask each one some unequivocal form of: "If a guilty verdict is reached in this capital case, will you be able to vote for the death penalty?"

Was that question asked? If it was, and if the juror answered "Yes," he or she lied under oath.
Posted by David Codrea at 8/10/2015 09:54:00 AM

3 comments:

Chris Mallory said...

Voir Dire should be reformed to only allow one question: "Are you kin by blood or marriage to the victim or the defendant?" Anything else destroys the basic protections of a jury trial.

8/10/2015 11:21 AM
Henry said...

Hey, David, what’s the limit? Why doesn’t the prosecutor just ask each juror if there is any chance they will vote “not guilty” and disquality anybody who says yes? Talk about stacking the deck before the first deal. Voir dire has become a travesty, let’s not make it worse.

8/10/2015 1:13 PM
David Codrea said...

Chris Mallory: So if you are on trial on a gun charge, you don't think your lawyer should be able to ask a prospective juror if they belong to the Bloomberg Moms? Seems to me the door swings both ways.

Henry: I guess if you want, you can distort what I said all kinds of ways. That doesn't make it what I said.

8/10/2015 1:23 PM

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