Qualifications for Serving on a Jury
1) What are the four main, basic requirements to be eligible
for jury duty?
Age (usually 18 years minimum)
United States citizenship
Residency in the judicial district covered by the court
English language ability
2) What are three conditions that most always disqualify
someone from jury duty?
Being of mentally incompetent to understand what’s
going on in court
A record of a felony conviction
Having sat as a juror recently (within whatever time limit
the court uses)
3) What are three general rationales for someone being
exempted from jury service?
Groups who are unlikely to be chosen for jury service at
all (ex: lawyers and police)
People whose absence from their jobs would cause a
hardship for the community
People who would have a SERIOUS personal hardship if
they served on a jury
Jury Pool
4) What is a jury pool?
The group of citizens called to jury service who are
available to be chosen to sit on a specific jury.
5) How are people chosen to become part of the jury pool?
They’re drawn at random from lists of residents -- usually
lists of licensed drivers, taxpayers, Water Dept., etc.
6) What is a jury summons? What happens if you ignore it?
It is a direction to come to the courthouse for jury duty.
Ignoring it would result in fines or possibly even jail time.
Juror Selection
7) What is the purpose of juror selection?
To find impartial, unbiased jurors who can hear evidence
and reach a verdict based ONLY on the evidence they
hear in the courtroom.
8) What is the difference between a “challenge for cause”
and a “peremptory challenge”?
Challenge for cause means that one or both of the
lawyers think this person could not be impartial.
Peremptory challenge means that one of the lawyers has
a gut feeling someone won’t be impartial.
9) What are the two methods of gathering information about
jurors? Questionnaires and Oral interview
10)What does the voir dire process involve?
It is oral questioning done by the lawyers and the judge.
It is based upon a citizen’s responses to the
questionnaire.
Petit Juries and Alternate Jurors
11) What is a petit jury? How many people are possibly on
a petit jury?
The jury that actually hears the case and decides its
verdict.
Usually there are 12 people on a petit jury.
12)
What are three things jurors are expected to do
during a case?
Hear evidence
Do not discuss the case with anyone. The case cannot be
discussed with fellow jurors until all evidence
is
presented. The case cannot be discussed with anyone
outside the court before a verdict is given.
Decide the case based ONLY on the evidence presented
in court.
13)
What is an alternate juror? Why are they included?
People who also sit on the jury during the case. Once all
the evidence is presented, the alternate jurors
are dismissed. They’re part of the jury in case a juror
must be excused for an emergency or dismissed
for misconduct.
14)
Do alternate jurors participate in the final decision
making? NO
Juror Misconduct
15)
What do standards of juror misconduct seek to
prevent in a jury?
Bias or reaching a decision before ALL the evidence has
been presented.
16)
Why does the timing of the juror misconduct matter?
If juror misconduct happens BEFORE the alternates are
dismissed, then the specific juror can be replaced with an
alternate. AFTER the alternates are dismissed it means
there’s a mistrial and the whole case must be tried over
again with a new jury.
17)
What are three examples of juror misconduct?
Too many to list all here.
Deadlocked & Hung Juries
18)
What is a deadlocked or hung jury?
It is a jury that cannot reach agreement on the guilt or
innocence of the accused person.
19)
What is an “Allen charge” or “dynamite” charge?
Why is this given?
It is an instruction given by a judge to a jury to go back to
try again to reach agreement. It cannot try to persuade
the jury to one side or another. Instead, it tries to
convince jurors to go back and reconsider whether any of
their conclusions are correct/incorrect.
20)
What happens if a jury remains deadlocked?
A mistrial is declared and a new trial with a new jury will
be scheduled.