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Originally Posted by Cory
I do think it's slightly naive to believe that somehow they managed to pick 12 jury members with absolutely no predisposed bias one way or the other, unless they've been living under a rock in a cave in the desert.
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Cory brought up an excellent point that I fully agree with and which I have personal experience from being in a jury pool of a high profile case in the state of Connecticut. Let me tell you that it's also very difficult and stressful for the jurors also.
I won't outright name the case but some of you may figure it out on your own (it was even brought back into the spotlight the past few weeks as the court had overturned the original death sentence because the original jury wasn't instructed properly) but it had to do with a person who wanted nothing more than to know what it felt like to kill someone and they even admitted thier guilt and motive to investigators after the crime was committed. The victim was a 13 year old neighbor of the accused who got his skull caved in with a 3 pound sledge hammer. The person has been sent back to death row after the latest verdict.
Unfortunately for me, my jury duty came up at the time they were chosing jurors for the original trial. I wound up having to go back several times as they narrowed the pool down. I had multiple meetings with the attorneys, I even got to meet the accused, plus I had a meeting with the judge who was to oversee the case. One of the follow up times that I went I was brought into one of the rooms by myself and left there to fill out a multiple page questionaire having to do with everything. It wasn't simple "yes" or "no" answers, you had to write a paragraph with your answer and why that's your answer. Basically they wanted to get inside your head and know how you felt and thought about everything. This case at that time was heavily on the news, radio, and in the papers. The tv in the jury room was kept on the Weather Channel for fear that we may see stories about it while we were there. After going back several times they finally let me go but one of the attorneys did mention to me that they had me narrowed down to an alternate and had wanted me there because I was of similar age as the accused (trial by peers). I was very happy to not be on this case.
Hopefully this will enlighten some of you as to what goes on with higher profile cases and the amount of questioning and filtering of jury members that is done before a case goes to court. I will also tell you that it was difficult with the amount of publicity with this case to go in there with
absolutely no preconcieved notions about this case. The same would be true for the Jackson case.
Jason