The Case of the Curious Voir Dire

I did my biennial day of jury service yesterday. I didn't get seated (so I can write about it) but I did get interviewed in the jury selection process called Voir Dire. It was a decidedly strange process.

I've been on juries before and the voi dire was simple and straight-forward. Do you know any of the principals involved? Here are the basic facts of the case in question - have you been involved in something similar? Can you be objective? Nothing too bizarre. The questioning yesterday queer, both attorneys were trying the case through the jury selection.

The case is a tad rare, a contested drunk driving arrest, 90% never see a courtroom. The defense counsel discovered a prospective juror who had had a negative encounter with the arresting officer. He cross-examined her at length to elicit de facto testimony attacking the officer. Defense counsel then engaged the jury in an interesting philosophical discussion where he asked us to vote guilt or innocence before the trial started. Calling it a discussion is a bit off, the prospective jurors all sat in stunned silence since we had ignorantly assumed we were expected to listen to the evidence before coming to a conclusion.

The prosecutor was no less strange. She presented the evidence of the case in sufficient detail the trial itself was beginning to look like an afterthought. She then ask which of us might refuse to convict when faced with this evidence. A couple of prospective jurors got browbeaten into agreeing to turn in to the judge any jurors who were obstructing a guilty verdict. The judge through all this was silent except to once observe that he is by habit and reputation completely disinterested.

To my relief I was excused. I'll never know if it was my Joe Stalin mustache, the impression I might be insufficiently sheep-like, or the shocked expression on my face as the lawyers questioned the prospective jurors. Perhaps the prosecutor Googled my name during lunch and discovered the time I wrote favorably about a Joan Baez song that urged us the "raze the prisons to the ground." I can understand how a prosecutor might be put off by that.

I admit I still have a naive opinion of the jury system. I believe in the concept of "twelve men (and women) good and true" selected from the community using their collective wisdom to decide truth and guilt. What I witnessed was a process where the prospective jurors were presented with the details of the case by the lawyers and urged, even hectored, into reaching a verdict before the trail had even begun. The judge, rather than being a learned arbitrator, was barely conscious.

The modern practice of voir dire and the whole modern jury selection process has perverted the justice system.