Should You Leave A Dangerous Juror On Your Jury?
Transcription
Sari de la Motte here, I specialize in helping attorneys communicate with jurors. In today's video, we're going to talk about when it's appropriate to leave a "dangerous juror" on your panel.
Allow me to tell you a story about a case that we won here in rural Oregon. We won the highest ever recorded verdict in that county. I was watching the attorney conduct voir dire and it became apparent very quickly that one of the women on the jury panel was a very bad juror for us. She disagreed with all of the things we hoped she'd agree with, and vice versa. But as we looked at who we should keep on and who we should kick off, we noticed that if we kicked her off, the next person to come in was a male who we weren't sure about. He was a "yellow" in my mind: not a negative, but not a positive either. He was an unknown. And we were afraid that he could potentially be a leader in this group.
I told the attorney, "I would leave this juror on." He looked at me and said, "Are you crazy? She's the worst juror in the panel!" I responded, "Here's what you need to remember. When we look at juries, we're really looking at group dynamics. So it's not so much what we think of that particular juror, but what the jury thinks about that particular juror. And as you were going through your voir dire, what I noticed was as she spoke several jurors rolled their eyes, other jurors turned ever so slightly away from her, some jurors held their breath, and all of that is nonverbally communicating that this juror is an outlier. She is not part of the group. The group has already kicked her out and therefore she is neutralized."
A risky maneuver? Possibly. But we left her on and as I mentioned, got the highest recorded verdict in that case.
What to do is not always cut and dry when you have a potentially dangerous jury, or juror. You really have to look at the group as a whole and observe how they are reacting to that particular juror, before making your decision about whether to leave them on or not. Now, that is difficult to do unless you're highly trained in group dynamics, which is why I always suggest you have at least another pair of eyes assisting you, not to watch your communication with individual jurors, but watching how the group is reacting.
Allow me to tell you a story about a case that we won here in rural Oregon. We won the highest ever recorded verdict in that county. I was watching the attorney conduct voir dire and it became apparent very quickly that one of the women on the jury panel was a very bad juror for us. She disagreed with all of the things we hoped she'd agree with, and vice versa. But as we looked at who we should keep on and who we should kick off, we noticed that if we kicked her off, the next person to come in was a male who we weren't sure about. He was a "yellow" in my mind: not a negative, but not a positive either. He was an unknown. And we were afraid that he could potentially be a leader in this group.
I told the attorney, "I would leave this juror on." He looked at me and said, "Are you crazy? She's the worst juror in the panel!" I responded, "Here's what you need to remember. When we look at juries, we're really looking at group dynamics. So it's not so much what we think of that particular juror, but what the jury thinks about that particular juror. And as you were going through your voir dire, what I noticed was as she spoke several jurors rolled their eyes, other jurors turned ever so slightly away from her, some jurors held their breath, and all of that is nonverbally communicating that this juror is an outlier. She is not part of the group. The group has already kicked her out and therefore she is neutralized."
A risky maneuver? Possibly. But we left her on and as I mentioned, got the highest recorded verdict in that case.
What to do is not always cut and dry when you have a potentially dangerous jury, or juror. You really have to look at the group as a whole and observe how they are reacting to that particular juror, before making your decision about whether to leave them on or not. Now, that is difficult to do unless you're highly trained in group dynamics, which is why I always suggest you have at least another pair of eyes assisting you, not to watch your communication with individual jurors, but watching how the group is reacting.