06-12-2024, 04:12 PM
(06-12-2024, 03:59 PM)CJD Wrote: 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.
I think with the numbers you supplied, it makes it even easier for the DA to knock out the likely Republican's.
500 down to 96 means 404 jurors were eliminated.
Of the pool, if the statistics hold, 435 would be D's and 65 would be R's. Each side would be able to dismiss 202 jurors. I think it is a lot easier, especially if you deep dive their social media, to root out the R's in that group, especially given so many swings, and load the jury with all D's.
202 tries to root out the 65 R's are pretty good odds, let alone if one or two slipped by, there is good chance they do not even make the jury.
