Jury Consultants Q&A Jury Consultants Voir Dire While the actual outcome of their vote may not be correlated to the real trial, nevertheless lessons

Jury Focus groups
Jury consultants have the ability to hire groups of randomly selected citizens who reflect ordinary prospective jurors, often from groups known to be either prosecution or defense oriented.

The attorney who has hired them will then give an opening statement of his or her case (and/or some of the issues in the case) while other attorneys on the team will give the opening statement or position for the opposition. A two-way mirror is often used to monitor the jurors' reactions to the presentations. Thereafter, all hired jurors are divided by groups of 12 and asked to deliberate.

Their deliberations are often filmed behind two-way mirrors so the attorneys can watch and evaluate. While the actual outcome of their vote may not be correlated to the real trial, nevertheless lessons can be learned.

For example, what if during the focus group deliberations in a murder case one of the jurors stated, "The evidence showed that the victim was a drug user, therefore she probably would have died sooner or later anyway because of her drug involvement" and was not willing to convict the defendant?



At the start of the real trial, an attorney for the prosecution could, during the voir dire, make prospective jurors commit that they would not hold that fact against the victim, or for that matter, the prosecutors, in their deliberations. Therefore, focus groups help narrow down the attorneys understanding of possible controversial issues before trial. Unless the court permits prospective jurors to be questioned either by questionnaire or during the voir dire about the issues surfacing from the focus groups, such exercises will have little value other than perhaps rehearsing ones presentation. Time might be better spent, however, gathering the evidence and preparing witnesses.

Source: The United States Attorneys? Bulletin













Jury Consultants - Jury Focus Groups
Jury consultants often use jury focus groups to help trial attorneys select a jury.

Jury Focus groups
Jury consultants have the ability to hire groups of randomly selected citizens who reflect ordinary prospective jurors, often from groups known to be either prosecution or defense oriented.

The attorney who has hired them will then give an opening statement of his or her case (and/or some of the issues in the case) while other attorneys on the team will give the opening statement or position for the opposition. A two-way mirror is often used to monitor the jurors' reactions to the presentations. Thereafter, all hired jurors are divided by groups of 12 and asked to deliberate.

Their deliberations are often filmed behind two-way mirrors so the attorneys can watch and evaluate. While the actual outcome of their vote may not be correlated to the real trial, nevertheless lessons can be learned.

For example, what if during the focus group deliberations in a murder case one of the jurors stated, "The evidence showed that the victim was a drug user, therefore she probably would have died sooner or later anyway because of her drug involvement" and was not willing to convict the defendant?



At the start of the real trial, an attorney for the prosecution could, during the voir dire, make prospective jurors commit that they would not hold that fact against the victim, or for that matter, the prosecutors, in their deliberations. Therefore, focus groups help narrow down the attorneys understanding of possible controversial issues before trial. Unless the court permits prospective jurors to be questioned either by questionnaire or during the voir dire about the issues surfacing from the focus groups, such exercises will have little value other than perhaps rehearsing ones presentation. Time might be better spent, however, gathering the evidence and preparing witnesses.

Source: The United States Attorneys? Bulletin




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Jury Consultants

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JURY CONSULTANTS (also called TRIAL CONSULTANTS) and JURY SELECTIONS
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