Voir Dire

Every lawyer needs to be well prepared for the first meeting with a prospective jury. First impressions are critical in all aspects of life, and that is particularly true with regard to prospective jurors – both their impression of you, and your impression of them. You want the jurors to like you, and be impressed with your demeanor and your questions. Ideally, you also want the jurors to start to identify with you and your client. On the other hand, you also want to obtain an accurate first impression of your prospective jurors – within minutes of meeting them, you must decide whether to accept or strike them as the fact-finders in your case.

Thus, being prepared for voir dire is critically important. This involves more than preparing a list of questions to ask. It includes thinking through your case from the jury’s point of view, thinking about how to make the jury comfortable, figuring out what biases may influence a juror, strategizing regarding the order of questions, and deciding how to use the limited time in which you have to ask them.

The objective of jury selection is to identify those individuals who are likely to view evidence based on their life experience in a particular way that is either predisposed to your case or is predisposed to your opponent’s case. Cases are often won or lost by jury selection.

Typically, the judge will conduct voir dire before counsel and then counsel has the right to conduct voir dire in state court. However, there is no right to voir dire in federal courts where it will only be allowed upon the discretion of the judge. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 47(a).

Challenges include challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. The most common challenges for cause are the juror has an implied bias, or an actual one. Code of Civil Procedure Section 225(b)1A and B. Implied bias is defined by Code of Civil Procedure Section 229(f) which states “the existence of a state of mind in the juror evincing enmity against, or bias towards, either party.” Challenges for cause should be made at sidebar and conducted after preliminary questioning of the jury panel. There are no limits to the number of challenges for cause.