Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Essay Example

Two Factors Influencing Criminal Jury Trials

Response 1:

“Voir dire” or jury selection certainly affects the outcome of criminal jury trials but not in the manner you would anticipate. Most people think the inherent purpose of “voir dire” is to weed out the potential jurors that would prejudice the trial or bias the defendant on trial or find impartial jurors from a pool representative of the community. However, many attorneys have found through much research the “psychological underpinnings of ‘voir dire’ are not consistent with the legal limitations and customary practices for questioning jurors.” There is further much conflict with the true purpose of ‘voir dire’ and every attorney’s unstated true purpose which is to find jurors predisposed ‘to their position’. Researcher Broeder found in 1965 that potential jurors often distort their answers during ‘voir dire’ to get selected on the jury trial which is not a true disposition of their character so how can a defendant truly obtain a ‘fair and just trial’? There are peremptory challenges and challenges for cause that a counselor at law can raise to exclude a potential juror however Baston v Kentucky held that a potential juror could not be excused solely based on his/her race and gender and distinguished by JEB v Alabama. Ham v Carolina allowed for jurors to be questioned regarding whether they could disregard any prejudices they felt regarding civil rights issues, but a defendant could not necessarily ask their own questions if they felt they might be prejudiced.

The correct way to conduct voir dire is for the attorney to introduce his/herself and to present the facts of the case to the potential jurors. The attorney should ask each juror to give a complete background on his/herself and then ask if any juror knows anything about the crime at hand. They should notice the body language, hand signals, gestures and mannerisms of the potential jurors. The attorney should look for genuine and sincere interests in each juror and try not to become repetitive or belligerent. The goal is to find the truth and move through each juror smoothly.

Response 2:

Recent studies have shown that pre-trial publicity has little to no influence on the outcome of the final verdict of a criminal trial. Often it appears the media may have influence on high profile murder trials but this just is not so according to recent research done by criminal minds and criminologists. There were over 1200 murder and bank robbery verdicts examined over the past two years and research has shown no statistical difference in the verdicts over those trials heavily publicized by the media and those on the low key side. “Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Sam Sheppard case in the 1960s, many people have assumed that the defendant can’t get a fair trial if there has been a lot of pre-trial publicity,” (Montaldo, 2010).  Loges said. “And certainly, the vast majority of pretrial publicity is negative to the defense. But the courts have developed ways of dealing with the publicity factor that makes it a non-issue, as long as attorneys and judges avail themselves of those remedies.” (Montaldo, 2010). Studies have shown that the media does have an influence on the sentencing phase though because judges do not want to appear in the limelight with the adverse affect as being lenient on those that commit heinous crimes.

References

The Real Purpose of Voir Dire Retrieved May 17, 2010 from, http://www.therightjury.com/publications_real_purpose.html

Montaldo, C. (2010) Free Press v Fair Trials Retrieved May 17, 2010 from, http://crime.about.com/od/issues/a/blosu041226.htm

Whittemore, K. & Ogloff, J. Factors that Influence Jury Decision Making Disposition Instructions and Mental State at the Time of the Trial Springer Link, 1995.