[Legal Discussion] Peremptory challenge vs. Stricken for cause?

[DaveTN]

I have some questions about jury selection, maybe some of the forum lawyers would step in but anyone is welcome to comment. I would ask that you please keep your opinions on the guilt or innocence of Zimmerman out of this if you can; there are several threads about that going on now.

As I understand it both the Prosecution and the Defense has a set number of peremptory challenges that they can use to strike a potential juror without giving a reason. If that is true does anyone know how many that is in Tennessee and Florida?

Stricken for cause is basically that there is a reason they believe a juror could not be impartial? Is there a limit? Can cause be that a person has seen or read media reports, or participated in a forum discussion?

It seems to me that in the Zimmerman case it will be extremely difficult to find jurors that haven’t read about or discussed this case, and if you found them would you want them on a jury? Would that not be ruling out an entire class of educated people that keep up on current events?

It’s also my understanding that in Florida 12 jurors are only required in capital cases. Since this is not a capital case will there only be 6?

Can jurors and witnesses be asked under oath to disclose their emails addresses, screen names and forums they belong to?

It just seems to me jury selection will be extremely hard in this case.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Hi DaveTN. Because of your earlier police work you have surely seen 1000X more workings of a courtroom than I ever will. The couple of times I did jury duty, a perhaps erroneous impression but it looked like the objective of both prosecution and defense was to weed out any potential juror who has even the slightest clue about the subject matter of the case. Not just knowledge of press reports. Ferinstance it didn't hurt my feelings but I got booted from a paternity child support case in pre-trial interview because the prosecution found out I happened to be a musician (musicians have a certain reputation to uphold I suppose). But otherwise I would have been rejected by the defense as soon as he would have found out I had one year earlier been a social worker and had in fact "got the ball rolling" on such paternity cases. Assuming he would have been smart enough to ask about it. So most likely the prosecution lawyer hurt himself not asking enough questions, assuming the defense lawyer would have tolerated a social worker sitting on a paternity trial.

You would think the legal system would work better with bright but impartial jurors. I think your are correct that it is nearly impossible that you could find a bright person who doesn't know about the Z case. People who don't know about the Z case are most likely dumber than dirt? How do we benefit from dumb juries? Maybe it is a wrong assumption that the typical juror who hasn't heard of the Z case would fit the category, "Lights are on but noboby's home". Maybe they can find a bunch of brilliant professors who were so busy studying astrophysics and rocket surgery that they never heard of the Z case?

[DaveTN]

Thanks Lester,

As cops we didn’t see the jury selection process, the jury was picked and a trial was going on by the time we were called.

I didn’t mean that all people that haven’t heard of this case were dumber than dirt, but if you kicked anyone that has, I wouldn’t think you would be left with much.

I was called for jury duty on a large trial, I told them I was a former Police Officer, but they still wouldn’t let me out. I was more than willing to do my civic duty, but there was no way an ex-cop was going to be allowed to sit on a jury of a criminal trial; there were over 25 lawyers in the courtroom. I got kicked out on the second day, I think they had been through about 30 or 40 potential jurors and had picked 1.

[tnhawk]

I think the question will be if they have become biased, for or against the defendant because of the news, not if they have seen the news related to the event.

[Stegall Law Firm]

Jury selection may be the toughest part of this case and will be a huge undertaking. The defense will certainly enlist the services of a jury selection expert to help determine who the ideal (and un-ideal) juror would be.

In Tennessee you get eight peremptory challenges for a felony. For-cause challenges are unlimited. Don't know what the numbers are in Florida. With race such a huge issue in this case, there are bound to be some Batson challenges. U.S. v. Batson was a case that said you can't remove a particular group of potential jurors based on their race, ethnicity or gender. So for instance if it looked like the prosecution was trying to remove white jurors, the defense could claim Batson. The prosecution would then have the burden of showing it was removing white jurors for something other than race.

I'm sure that the case will be moved to another venue, like Miami or Tallahassee, or perhaps they will keep the case in its original venue (near Orlando I think) and get jurors from another Florida city and bring them there. They did that in a death penalty case in Memphis. Picked a jury from Nashville, bused them to Memphis and kept them here two weeks. In Zimmerman, since the crime scene is so important, I'm thinking that they willl show it to jurors during the trial, actually bring them there one day with the lawyers and the judge. So perhaps they will get jurors from another city and bring them in.

Obviously everyone has heard of this case, but simply hearing about it won't disqualify you. It has to be an inability to be impartial. In Tennessee you're only entitled to name, address, occupation, and spouse's name and occupation. Not sure how much effort would be made to hunt down what everyone has said online. That would be a lot of work. You can't read people's minds, but you can develop a "type" and do the best you can to get as many of your types as possible in the box. That's about the best you can do.