Jury selection can be a very interesting process, regardless of what your role in it is. Something about the process feels uniquely “American”. The basic concept of a bunch of strangers gathering together from completely different walks of life, for the sole purpose of figuring out which of them should be tasked with rendering justice feels like something out of a fantasy story or frontier town. The idea can come across as almost alien to anyone who isn’t an American, because the general idea of who power lies with in a society is truly different for us than it is for others.

The fact that the process is so interesting by its very nature makes it a little disappointing that so many people seem to want to do whatever they can to not serve on a jury. There is a certain feeling that if people had a better idea of exactly what the process entailed and how important it is, that maybe there would be a little more eagerness to serve. Ironically, people who work in law generally don’t get to serve on juries, despite many of them being the most readily willing to do so. It sounds backwards for that to be the case, but there is actually a very good reason why this is the norm.

People sometimes ask how we go about selecting a jury, and what the typical profile looks like for a suitable candidate. The first thing to understand is that selecting a jury is actually an agreement between both parties to a suit or case. For someone to serve on a jury, both parties generally need to agree on that juror. The reason for this is simple: Impartiality. For the American justice system to work, it’s critical that anyone serving on a jury does not come in with any preconception or bias that would have them pre-disposed towards one side or the other. For that reason, both sides get certain amounts of peremptory challenges, where they can exclude a potential juror and sometimes it can be done without having to give any argument for why.

These peremptory challenges are typically used to remove any jurors showing obvious bias towards one side, or viewpoints which would pre-dispose them towards a certain outcome. For better or worse, this is usually where people with well-developed legal understandings or experiences with the legal system see their exit. This isn’t always the case, but it usually is. The juror’s job is not to necessarily bring their own personal views into the judgment, but to hear both arguments and decide. And in many cases, neither side of a matter wants to find themselves in a situation where a juror ends up litigating their own story of a case in deliberations.

This is why most attorneys are usually looking for a certain archetype of individual as an ideal juror, regardless of what they practice. That individual is someone who appears as though they will follow the rules of the court and its procedures, is willing to hear out both sides, and insists that they will not be biased towards either one. Next, the person may express that they are willing to stick to judging the case by the legal merits, and not emotionally, though it isn’t uncommon that an attorney may want a more emotionally guided person on a jury if they find they can work with that type of juror well.

At the end of the day, most attorneys understand that it is a bit of a fool’s errand to try to game a jury in their favor. There is certainly a degree of gamesmanship in the process, and slight advantages are absolutely looked for, but there is very rarely going to be a situation where you can “win” jury selection. And in many cases, it can actually backfire through unpredictability. It is more ethical, and better for everyone in the process if the jury that gets selected is consistently “normal”.