Clearing Up Trump Trial Misinformation

[CJD]

(06-12-2024, 03:20 PM)FormerlyBengalRugby Wrote: I am not well versed in the jury selection process, but lets look at the numbers.

Roughly 100 prospective jurors, let's assume the stats are on target and 76 of those people are Democrats and 13 are Republicans'. We know consultants are involved to read and predicts which way the potential jurors lean.

The DJT team was likely trying to root out the most extreme left wing type with excisions, challenges, whatever, while the DA was trying to root out the 13 Republicans.

One is far more easily done than the other. Then the midline pool from which to draw jurors is most likely entirely Democrats.

I am not arguing the verdict here, only show how easy it would be to have DJT tried by a very unfavorable jury, if the DA were even the slightest bit competent.

In this case, there were 500 jurors selected and interviewed and 96 were moved to the next stage of selection before 12 were selected and 6 alternates were designated. 

It's true that in a heavily blue area, the prosecution has an advantage in that they need to eliminate fewer jurors, but they need to give a reason for most of their eliminations. they are given a few "no reason" dismissals, but they need to use those very tactfully. The stated goal is to get an unbiased jury to the jury box.

The real goal is to get as many of your biased jurors as possible to the jury box, for the DA and the defense. In the case of a criminal trial, rigging the jury is significantly more difficult for the prosecutor than the defense because, in reality, all the defense needs to do is sneak one biased juror onto the jury to potentially hang the entire trial, whereas the prosecution, if they were planning on creating a rigged jury, would need to ensure all 12 jurors be satisfactorily biased in their favor but not obvious about it such that the defense has grounds to exclude them or to use their preemptory challenges on them.

In this case, both sides did extensive background research on these jurors, even going so far as to look at past social media posts that indicated any kind of bias one way or another. That's why they had such an expanded jury pool, as they were excluding hundreds of people at a time for various reasons.

I don't even use social media that much, but I have liked a few tweets that criticized Trump, and I bet that would have been enough for me to get kicked out of the pool without a preemptory challenge. If you live in Manhattan and hate Trump, your social media is probably much worse than mine haha.

That is to say, I think you're exaggerating how easy it is to create a rigged jury, even in a biased pool. I think getting a single juror who favored Trump onto the jury would be significantly easier.

All the defense needed was a true Trump supporter in that 12 juror pool to spoil the entire trial. It seems to me that they were either incapable of properly poison pilling the jury or it was such a legitimate case that even Trump supporters, when faced with the evidence, would have had to concede that he did indeed commit these crimes.