Injury In Idaho

How is a Jury Selected in a Personal Injury Case?

Most car accident cases settle prior to trial. However, if a case does not settle and ends up in trial, it is almost always a jury trial. Several weeks before the trial, a notice is sent out to potential jurors who are randomly selected from voter registration lists.  Although only 12 jurors are needed for trial, a notice to appear is sent to many more persons because the process of jury selection inevitably results in some persons being disqualified or de-selected as jurors. It is not uncommon for 30 to 40 persons to be summoned to court for a single jury trial.

The prospective jurors then usually watch a movie explaining the role of juries in the American legal system. In the presence of the parties to a lawsuit and their attorneys, the potential jurors are then seated in the courtroom, at which time the judge gives them a brief description of the type of case about to go to trial.

Then begins the process known as ‘voir dire’. This term, derived from the French, means that the potential jurors will be questioned by the attorneys as part of the selection process. The purpose of these questions consist of the following:

1.  To make sure that a juror is not related to any of the parties or key witnesses in the case.

2.  To exclude jurors who have already made up their mind about the case based on something they may have heard on TV or radio, or from other persons.

3.  To determine if any of the jurors have a strong bias or previous disposition that would make them unable to fairly consider the facts in the case and arrive at a just verdict.

4.  To see if any of the jurors have severe health problems or personal obligations that would be distracting so that could not focus on the trial.

5.  To find out if any of the jurors have been personally been involved in a similar case.

6.  To generally learn about the attitudes and life history that each juror brings to the courtroom.

After the potential jurors have answered the attorneys’ questions, they can be dismissed from the jury panel by one of two ways – a challenge ‘for cause’ or a peremptory challenge.

A challenge for ‘for cause’ is raised by an attorney if he believes that a juror’s answer has shown such a strong bias that the juror cannot be fair or impartial in deliberating on the case.  For example, in a car crash case involving a taxi cab, if a juror states that he has had only bad experiences with taxis and believes that taxi drivers always drive too fast, the judge would probably dismiss that juror from the jury panel.

A preemptory challenge is one in which the attorney is able to dismiss a potential juror without giving any reason whatsoever. Usually the dismissal is based upon a hunch that the juror’s answers to questions reveal her to be someone not sympathetic to his client’s position in the case. However, each side is only given a limited number of preemptory challenges, so they must be used carefully.

In a trial which will take many weeks to conclude, the court will often seat two additional (alternate) jurors in addition to the 12 initially selected. One or both of these alternates will only deliberate on the verdict if one or two of the original 12 jurors becomes ill or is otherwise not able to attend the full trial.

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