Read the rules and responses here.

Court officials say a Birmingham woman who changed her name to Jesus Christ didn’t live up to it when she reported for jury duty this week.

The woman, previously named Dorothy Lola Killingworth, was sent to Judge Clyde Jones’s courtroom for a criminal case Monday.

Court officials told The Birmingham News Tuesday that the 59-year-old was excused because she was disruptive and kept asking questions instead of answering them.

So Alabama court officials expected Jesus Christ to play nice and cooperate with those in power?

Then they came to Jerusalem. And He entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves; and He would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. And He began to teach and say to them, “Is it not written, ‘MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR ALL THE NATIONS’? But you have made it a ROBBERS’ DEN.” The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him; for they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching.

Alabama court officials expected Jesus Christ to answer their questions?

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. “Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And they call Alabama part of the Bible Belt? Pshaw.

What sets me off is that lots of our potential jurors are these nutjobs (do you think more people in Texas, or in New Jersey think the President is the Anti-Christ?). These folks hold political and philosophical views because “there’s no proof to the contrary” (à la Glenn Beck).

Our jurors are people like Patricia Roberts of Bellaire, Texas, who writes to the Houston Chronicle:

How does Tiger Woods get away with refusing to talk to the police about his accident? If it was anyone who was not rich and famous, he or she would be in jail by now.

I’m not even certain I know where to start talking with these people, to try to uncover the nuttiness that might hurt my client’s case. “How many of you believe things because of the absence of proof to the contrary?”?

I despair.

I’ve talked about how the jury panel is a group and the jury is a group. Why? Because people like to be in groups. Most people will, given a choice between being in a big group and being in a small group, choose the big group. Another evolutionary relic? Safety in numbers? I think probably so. If I stay with the bigger group, we’ll be safer from predators.

So Simple Rule 16: The Herd Rule:

Remember that you are dealing with herd animals.

I’ve given examples of questions for the jury panel in other simple rules:

“Do any of you. . . ” versus “How many of you . . .”

The second question presumes that there are some people who . . ., and is therefore more likely to get responses than the first question, which doesn’t.

If you want to find as many people as possible who share some opinion that won’t be helpful in your jurors, or if you want the jurors to commit to a basic and uncontroversial principle, ask the question the second way: “How many of you agree with Mr. Jones that Fred is probably guilty?”

If, on the other hand, you want the people who share Mr. Jones’s opinion to keep their mouths shut about it, ask the question the first way: “Do any of you (or does anyone) agree with Mr. Jones that the government should be held to a higher standard than beyond a reasonable doubt?”

Herd animals don’t want to be cut out from the herd; they want to blend in. The jury panel is a group, and the group is a herd. When you are picking a jury, remember that.

Simple Rule 15: The Bat Rule:

Ping, then listen. Or fail.

Because bats, you know, use echolocation: ping! and detect food and obstacles by the signal that bounces back. A bat that doesn’t ping doesn’t eat, but neither does a bat that doesn’t listen.

Your ping is a question. You have to ping. If you don’t ask any questions, you don’t get any information. But if you ping and then immediately start thinking about your next ping instead of listening to the signal that comes back to you, why ping at all?

You don’t get any information by asking questions. Ping, then listen. Or fail.

Why did they stand up for Atticus Finch? Because he was an upright, honest man fighting for what he—and they—knew was right.

Simple Rule 14: The Atticus Finch Rule:

Be the lawyer they want to stand up for.

This group has sixty heads and sixty bodies, each one of which is throwing off communications cues every second.

It is not possible for one lawyer, talking to sixty people, to listen to and record what one person says and how he says it while tracking the nonverbal communication provided by the other fifty-nine.

Thus Simple Rule 13: The Undertow Rule:

Never swim alone.

Get someone on your team to pick the jury. It doesn’t have to be some fancy expensive jury consultant (though it can be). It’s an excellent assignment for a young lawyer seeking trial experience, but your assistant doesn’t even have to be a lawyer. All socially-ept people are experts, though they might not be aware of it, at reading faces and body language. You want someone at your side to notice that Mr. Bryant was looking crosswise at you while Ms. Velasquez was hanging on both lawyers’ every word.

You have your client, of course, but his position as the guest of honor suggests that he might not be entirely socially competent (not that he’s necessarily guilty, but people rarely wind up charged with crimes because they’ve made all the right decisions). Besides, this is a situation in which four eyes is good, but six eyes is better.

If you can’t cajole someone to second-chair your jury selection, consider that you may not be entirely socially competent yourself. Figure out how you can do better, and never swim alone.

When you get up to talk to them, what’s your relationship to the group? You’re an outsider. You are not someone who they are eager to follow. In the best-case scenario, your opposing counsel has gone before you and acted like Big Important Lawyer Man, and the jury is expecting more of the same from you (in the worst-case scenario, your opposing counsel has found a place in the group).

So, Jury Selection Simple Rule 12: The Field Trip Rule is:

Stay with the group!

I know you have places you want to go in voir dire—a story to tell, compelling arguments to make, information to discover. But you’ve got to go there with the group.

You will find friends on the jury panel—characters who seem simpático and bright, and understand what you’re trying to get at. You can’t go off and chat with these friends; if you do, you’re not staying with the group. Your friends are the first people the other side is going to strike, and if you’ve spent all your time chatting with the people with whom you’re most comfortable, you’ll be left with twelve jurors with whom you haven’t talked. (Again, jury selection is not about being comfortable.)

Like people, groups have personality and character. They also have rhythm. If you are talking with Mr. Jones about guns and Mr. Jones is done with the topic, it doesn’t mean that you are because the rest of the group might not be. You have some authority, because of the situation, to choose what the group talks about, but staying with the group means making sure the group is ready for you to move on to the next topic, and knowing when the group is ready for you to quit.

As you observe the group (from the moment they enter the courtroom), you’ll start to see some of the group’s internal divisions and relationships. Ms. Gonzalez and Mr. Moncriffe definitely get along, but Ms. Gonzalez does not care for Ms. Gupta. Mr. Stanley has strong definite feelings about drugs; Ms. Anderson rolls her eyes at him. And so forth. The twelve jurors that wind up in the box are going to form their own group, and its dynamics are going to be based on the dynamics of the larger group.

It’s all about the group. Stay with the group.

So you’re in jury selection, and you want to get the jurors talking about the things that maybe they’re not used to discussing in front of 60 near-strangers. What do you do?

Well, everyone knows The Playing Doctor Rule: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, right? That’s our 11th Simple Rule for Better Jury selection. If you want to see theirs, you’ve got to show them yours.

In jury selection, show them what?

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

You want truth? Tell them the truth. If you lie to your jury, they’ll lie to you.

You want depth? Go deep. If you only talk to the jury about shallow things, they’ll reciprocate.

If you want your jurors to talk about their prejudices against the minority group your client belongs to, what do you need to talk about? Your own prejudices.

What’s that you say? You don’t have any prejudices? Bullshit. Everyone has prejudices. It’s entirely natural; we’re hardwired by natural selection to prefer members of the group we identify with over members of other groups. We can overcome our hardwiring, but not by pretending the hardwiring doesn’t exist.

If you haven’t committed the introspection necessary to acknowledge your prejudices, you’re not dealing with them. More to the point of this post, you can’t expect your jurors to do any more than you’re willing to do yourself. Imagine: you get up and say, “I don’t have any prejudices. Do any of you?”

What are your personal issues in your client’s case? When you first heard about the case, what was your “yeah, but . . .”, your reservation?

“Yeah, but he shouldn’t have been there in the first place”?

“Yeah, but he’s a gang member”?

“Yeah, but this is his third DWI”?

This “yeah, but”, if you can identify it, might be a good place to start with the jury. Why? Several reasons, but this should suffice: Because they’ll probably have the same “yeah, but”, and if you can at least mitigate (if not eliminate) that factor before the prosecutor gets up to make his opening statement, there’s a chance that the presumption of innocence will last at least until you get up to make yours.

Show them how?

Just tell them, however you’re uncomfortable doing it. Uncomfortable? Yes. You’re going to ask the jury to do something uncomfortable, sharing intimate truths with semi-strangers; you can’t expect them to do that if you remain within your comfort zone. Push a little bit farther than is easy for you. And for God’s sake tell them the truth. This is not a time to be making up cute little stories.

If the truth is that your client’s tattoos made you nervous, tell the jurors that. If that’s easy for you, tell them more specifically how the tattoos made you feel—in danger, frightened. If that’s easy, push a little farther out—talk about what you imagined going through his mind? It’s okay to show that you don’t feel the same way anymore (by sitting close to your client, touching him), but don’t go into how you got over it—that’s what you want the jurors to tell you.

Do you have the audacity to tell the 12 people who will be deciding your client’s fate that you found him scary? If you don’t, why would they admit to you that they find him scary?

Show them yours. They’ll show you theirs.

Save something for the end.

There’s the possibility that, while the game is still afoot, the court will try to artificially limit your time. If the judge doesn’t limit your time, when you’re conducting an organic scripted jury selection, you and the jury will at some point all just run out of steam. Endings are difficult to improvise.
In the first situation, a little more than an “out” is called for. Have some lawyerly yes-or-no questions to toss into the mix in case a curmudgeonly judge starts grumbling while you’re engaging the jury with open-ended questions. “Mr. Gonzalez says that he’ll assume that Fred is guilty if Fred doesn’t testify; that reminds me: how many of you have been witnesses in criminal cases?” or “Ms. Berg has told us that she is married to a police officer. How many of you have close relationships with cops?” Those are the kinds of questions that the judge is used to hearing lawyers ask, and they might buy you a little more time to ask questions that will actually do your client some good.

Whether the judge finally decides that the jury has had enough jury selection goodness or you realize that the game is over, it’s good to have an “out”—one final unifying question to ask the entire panel, so that you can sit down on a high note.

This one question should be designed to get all of the potential jurors to agree on some fundamental proposition favorable to your case, and therefore will violate most of these rules. For example, “Can we all agree to wait till all of the evidence is in before deciding this case?” or “Raise your hand if you promise to give Fred a fair shake.”

Think of a question you like better than those, and save something for the end.