Who is in charge of jury selection process?

Question

Who is in charge of jury selection process?

Answer 1

What do you mean "in charge of?"

The jury selection process begins when lists of eligible jurors are created. This part of the process is usually conducted by persons known as Commissioners of Jurors. In some places, the Commissioner of Jurors is simply a hat that the county clerk or the clerk of the superior court in each county wears.

The lists can be made up from drivers' license applications, voter registration rolls, or any other good source of information about the people of the county. Census rolls would be great, but their use for this purpose is prohibited.

However, lawyers can use the census rolls to show that the pool of jurors does not reflect the population of the county. In the bad old days, this was part of the game. The population of Montgomery County, Alabama was 80% "colored folks." Yet whenever lawyers went to the courthouse to pick juries, the potential pool of jurors was, to be kind, lily white.

So step one in the process...the most important step of all...is one that most people are not aware of and few indeed actually see in operation. The result, however, is a list of potential jurors.

Step Two is to find out which of the potential jurors are legally "qualified" to serve as jurors. For the most part, the "qualification process consists of making sure the potential juror is a US citizen who actually lives in the county, who has possession of a normal set of mental faculties and who is not an ex-con. A subsidiary step in this process is to address people who claim to be exempt. Certain professions, such as clergy, are exempt from having to serve. Certain family situations, such as being a stay-at-home mother who has children under the age of 14 or so, also entitle one to an exemption, as does being the sole (or nearly sole) proprietor of  real business.

Every month or so, the juror commissioner draws the names of a certain number of qualified jurors. How many are called depends, first, on how many jury trials the county expects to hold that month, how many jurors will be interviewed to find enough people to fill those juries, and what proportion of people who are called will simply ignore the summons and go to the beach or the mountains or the park instead.

Step three: the jurors assemble in the "Central Jury Part" or similar hall. Now the Clerk of the Court is in charge. The potential jurors, now known as "veniremen" (so called because they came to court) read trashy novels, and do not do much else, because they are usually not allowed to use cell phones or blackberries in a courtroom. When a case is sent down to pick a jury, the lawyers for each side sign in with the clerk, who assigns them either to a courtroom or a jury selectroom. There are three areas in a selectroom: the well, the box, and the venire. The venire is the public area where the veniermen (and any spectators) sit. The well is where the lawyers (who are now in charge) sit. The box is where the first six or twelve veniremen sit after being selected at random. The clerk usually sends four or five prospective jurors into the room for each seat on the jury: for a jury of 12, you expect to have about 50 candidates in the pool to select from.

The lawyers ask questions to determine if any venireman has a bias or prejudgment about the case, or if there is any other reason you want them off the jury. This is the process known as "voir dire." If there is a good reason to exclude  juror, either lawyer may "challenge for favor."  If your client is a man of color charged with raping the white captain of the high school cheerleading squad, you would challenge a juror if you found out that on weekends, he wears a robe and "lights" crosses in the woods. If the reason is less compelling, the lawyer may challenge peremptorially. Each side has a limited number of peremptory challenges, which in principle may be exercised for any reason at all. The lawyer may still be called upon to "articulate" a basis for the peremptory challenges to preclude his having a prohibited basis. For example, if in the example cited, the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to exclude men and women of color from the jury, and only people of color were challenged peremptorially, he had better be prepared to explain his challenges with something that passes the smell test.

Either lawyer can take a jury-selection problem to a judge at any time. This happens if one lawyer wants to challenge for favor and the other lawyer disagrees; or if a lawyer wants to demand a racially-neutral explanation for why the DA is knocking all the colored boys off the jury (or similar questions).

The process continues until the lawyers have picked a jury.

In federal court, the judge usually handles the voir dire, with the lawyers permitted to ask a few supplementary questions at the end. Federal courts tend to pick juries more quickly and with less drama than state courts manage.

Answer 2

I know that in NC, and i'm not sure if its like this everywhere else, but it is randomly selected. People get letters in the mail saying when you have to show up and what time. After you get there, you get picked to be on jury duty. Not everyone who is called in, is choosen to sit in on the case. If you get chosen to be the jury, you have to come back on the court date.

Answer 3

The trial judge.  He presides while the defense and prosecutors ask questions to prospective jurors.  Each attorney gets some number of juror eliminations with "no cause".  After that, the attorney must have a reason for disqualifying someone.