Presenting a live 90-minute webinar with interactive Q&A Jury Selection in Personal Injury Litigation: Connecting With Today's Jury Pool Using Effective Juror Profiling and Voir Dire to Pick the Best Jury Thursday, February 26, 2015 1pm Eastern | 12pm Central | 11am Mountain | 10am Pacific Today’s faculty features: Anthony D. Castelli, Attorney, Law Offices of Anthony D. Castelli , Cincinnati Jaine Fraser, Ph.D., Trial Psychology Institute , Dallas Christian Myer, Partner, Dolman Law Group , Clearwater , Fla. The audio portion of the conference may be accessed via the telephone or by using your computer's speakers. Please refer to the instructions emailed to registrants for additional information. If you have any questions, please contact Customer Service at 1-800-926-7926 ext. 10 .
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Connecting with Today’s Jury Pool Tony Castelli, ESQ. tony@castellilaw.com Jaine Fraser, Ph. D. jaine@trialshrink.com Christian Myer, ESQ. christian@dolmanlaw.com
Attorney Christian Myer
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Time Constraints Tough Cause Questions Identify Leaders 8
Recognizing Today’s Society Checking Social Media Before Checking Social Media During/After General Attitude 9
Jury Selection in Personal Injury Litigation: Connecting With Today's Jury Pool Effective Questioning and Determining Bias Jaine E. Fraser, Ph.D. jaine@trialshrink.com
You can’t change a juror’s strongly held beliefs • You have a two part mission 11
Make it easy for jurors to give you “ negative ” answers • Don’t say anything good about your case • Don’t bring your clients to jury selection • Talk about thoughts, feelings, and opinions in any case, not this case 12
Stairstep your questions to get the most information • Lawsuits in general • Personal injury lawsuits • Medical malpractice lawsuits 13
Scaled questions give valuable insights 14
Scaled questions give valuable insights When I hear about a • Have questions personal injury lawsuit, I am suspicious. written out ahead of Strongly agree time Agree People are too quick to Disagree sue, claiming they have Strongly disagree • Always use an even been injured. number of responses – There should be laws - There should be laws making it more difficult to • Only ask questions that file personal injury lawsuits. expose bad jurors 15
Address your problems head on 16
Address your problems head on • Mom smoked during pregnancy 17 17
In a case where a mother smoked during pregnancy, I would find the mother primarily at fault if the child suffered birth injuries. Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree 18
Address your problems head on • Mom smoked during pregnancy • Mom was overweight 19
If a woman is 100 pounds overweight and her child suffers brain damage during labor and delivery, I would attribute a significant amount of the blame to the mother. Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree 20
Address your problems head on • Mom smoked during pregnancy • Mom was overweight • Imperfect prenatal care 21
If a pregnant woman misses two of her last four doctor appointments, I would find her primarily at fault if the child suffered birth injuries. Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree 22
Don’t let these people on your jury • Medical professionals • General contractors (except nurse aids or home • Law enforcement health providers) – this • Business owners includes people who work in doctor ’ s office • Insurance workers • Engineers • Scientists, except physics • Accountants • Architects • Real estate agents • First line supervisors 23
…and be careful about these folks • People with high school educations who have worked at the same place for 20+ years • Defendants in lawsuits • Prior presiding jurors • Court personnel • Human resource workers 24
www.trialshrink.com 25
TAIN INTED JURY POOLS & WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM Anthony D. . Castelli tony@castellilaw.com
The subject of tainted jury pools generally come up most often in criminal cases for the reason that those are generally high-profile cases that have gotten a lot of publicity. When there is a criminal case where there has been particularly egregious facts which has garnered much publicity, whether local or nationwide, most of the jurors will have heard of the case and many will have formed some type of opinion as to guilt. 27
Take for example the case of Eddie Ray Ralph who is accused of killing Chris Kyle, the American Sniper. Kyle is widely acknowledged as the most lethal sniper in US Military history, having racked up 160 confirmed kills. As the story goes, Chris Kyle and a buddy had taken Eddie Ray Ralph, to a Texas shooting range. Kyle took Ralph to the shooting range to provide support and camaraderie and to help Ralph’s Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder. The movie of course paints Kyle as a tremendous hero. This, separate and apart from the extensive publicity given to the shooting, obviously would have many people believe that Chris Kyle was an American Hero and even more, an emotional vileness would be in their minds, towards someone who killed Kyle. 28
The best way to get away from a tainted jury pool is to ask for a change of venue. The place where the incident occurred is certainly likely to have the most publicity and for its local citizens to have the most “knowledge about what they think happened in the case.” However, a spectator of the movie is a nationwide phenomenon, although not specifically dealing with the case at hand, but with the victim in such a high level, heroic manner that the positive feelings for the hero may drown out the ability to listen to an insanity defense of the defendant. 29
Hidden bias also can taint a jury pool. In other words, we are all familiar with the jurors stating they can be fair and impartial on a superficial basis. Deep down we know that a juror with a police officer who loves his brother, is going to be more partial towards police testimony than someone who has had a negative experience with the police. Although not an example of a complete taint of a jury pool, it is an isolated example of a tainted juror. These isolated examples are more common than the tainted jury pools as a whole. In a widespread jury taint issue, because of publicity, a change of venue can be requested. Also ask the Court for extra pre-emptory challenges. Additionally, tailored questionnaires given to the jury pool in advance with specific questions from the attorneys, can also be a useful technique. 30
Recall the case of Kenneth Lay of the Enron Corporation. The trial setting was in Houston, Texas and Lay faced 7 counts of fraud, conspiring to fool investors into believing that Enron was healthy before the company crashed. 400 potential jurors completed questionnaires in the first step of jury selection. Jurors presented opinions in those questionnaires such that Lay was guilty criminally and morally, guilty personally and was in fact, a devil and a high-class crook. From those questionnaires, the 400 potential jurors were wittled down to 164. 31
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