Recently in Juries Category

This post was written by Rita Handrich: "Maybe you can. While ink on the skin doesn't mean what it used to (see our post here) it still is a concern for many among us. Body art/ink has become mainstream as evidenced by its presence among a wide cross-section of the population. Even the very educated have tattoos. One of the blogs at Discover Magazine's website recently uploaded a variety of 'science' tattoos which decorate the bodies of scientific researchers. Very amusing.

But parents worry. And so do litigators choosing juries. What do those tattoos mean? There's research for that!..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active links by clicking on the author's name.

Source: The Jury Room, 24 February 2010. Reproduced with permission of Douglas Keene.

This post was written by Simon Fodden: "A study commissioned by the U.K. Ministry of Justice, "Are Juries Fair" [PDF] by Cheryl Thomas, examined the following issues:

• Do all-White juries discriminate against BME defendants?
• Do jurors racially stereotype defendants?
• Do juries at certain courts rarely convict?
• Do juries rarely convict on certain offences?
• Do jurors understand legal directions?
• Do jurors know what to do about improper conduct in the jury room?
• Are jurors aware of media coverage of their cases?
• How is the internet affecting jury trials?

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active link by clicking on the author's name.

This post was written by Rita Handrich: "Matthew Harrison has an article on Colorism in the January issue of The Jury Expert. He discusses the role of colorism (or "skin color bias") in the workplace and then three trial consultants discuss his work in the context of the courtroom. There's a lot of good information for litigators in the trial consultant responses and we recommend you go take a look if you are interested in learning more about the relationship between skin color and bias (in the workplace or in the courtroom..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active links by clicking on the author's name.

Source: The Jury Room, 10 February 2010. Reproduced with permission of Douglas Keene.

Bruce Sterling writes: "Last week, a Maryland appeals court upended a first-degree murder conviction because a juror consulted Wikipedia for trial information. [We first posted about it here]. Earlier this year, the appeals judges erased a conviction for three counts of assault because a juror did cyberspace research and shared the findings with the rest of the jury. In a third recent trial, a juror's admission to using his laptop for off-limits information jeopardized an attempted-murder trial.

On Friday, lawyers for Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon asked for a new trial in part because five of the jurors who convicted her of embezzlement Dec. 1 were communicating among themselves on Facebook during the deliberations period - and at least one of them received an outsider's online opinion of what the verdict should be. The "Facebook Friends," as Dixon's lawyers call them in court documents, became a clique that the lawyers argue altered jury dynamics.

[Snip]

The issue is not peculiar to Maryland. The American Bar Association noted that in March, an eight-week federal drug trial in Florida ended in a mistrial - not because one juror tattled to the judge that another had resorted to cyberspace searches about the case. After asking all 12 jurors, the judge learned that eight others had Web-surfed, too.

Appeals elsewhere are based partly on jurors' posts on Twitter and Facebook, according to the ABA, with worries about the lack of control and breach of trust."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: ResourceShelf, 13 December 2009

Posted by StephanieWestAllen: "Abstract:

This paper analyzes the ways in which jurors use everyday storytelling techniques in their deliberations. It begins by reviewing the literature on how jurors receive and process evidence, emphasizing narrative and storytelling. It then presents some new, qualitative linguistic data drawn from actual jury deliberations, which shed light on jurors' standards of evidence and proof, as well as on the persuasive tactics they use in dealing with each other. Although these data are limited, they provide an interesting basis for assessing existing ideas about jury evidence-processing and thinking more broadly about the strengths and weaknesses of the jury system.

Click to download 'Stories from the Jury Room: How Jurors Use Narrative to Process Evidence' (SSRN)".

The active link is available at the source site listed below.

Source: idealawg, 9 December 2009

From the Article:

The widespread use of the Internet has taken a lot of the guesswork out of jury selection.

Web users, especially those involved with social networking sites, are revealing much more of their personal information, often unknowingly.

The Web also makes it easier for professional investigators to uncover personal information from official records not available to casual users.

Professional investigators have always had access to more information than the casual computer user, but these searches are now paying off more than ever.

Jeffrey T. Frederick, director of the Jury Research Division at Charlottesville's National Legal Research Group, said that people are revealing more and more personal information through their Web activities.

Access the Complete Article

Source: Wisconsin Law Journal

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: ResourceShelf, 28 November 2009

Posted by Douglas Keene: "I had the pleasure of seeing a wonderful comedian and storyteller--Mike Birbiglia--live in New York last year in a one-man show called "Sleepwalk With Me", and again on a Comedy Central special several months ago.  The special, called "What I Should Have Said was Nothing" includes a socially painful but funny autobiographical story, to which the audience audibly moans in anticipation of what they could see was about to happen.

Mike (a really likable and sweet actor, and hopefully as nice a person as he is on stage), responds to the audience's moan by saying "I know! I'm in the future, too!"  The irony of his reporting to the audience that he felt what the audience was feeling was both endearing and a joining experience.  We all loved him, even though we could see what a bad turn the story was about to take. His candor was as charming as his story was hilarious.

It brought to mind the truism that we don't have to be perfect, we have to be honest.  Acknowledging errors, or focusing on the good intentions that resulted in our unintended gaffe, can be mitigating, if not the basis for forgiveness.

We have seen this in prominent public figures (insert your favorite infidelity headline here), who don't get publicly hammered for the misconduct but for their clumsy and defensive management of inescapable truths (see the papers on our website on Apology and on Eliot Spitzer).  If a party hurts someone and hesitates to admit it, if they don't share the moral reaction of the jury, they will be punished as an unrepentant reprobate.

Know how the story is felt, and acknowledge the feeling."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: The Jury Room, 19 November 2009

Posted by Rita Handrich "'Everybody lies'--or so says the protagonist on Fox TV's popular medical drama, 'House'. Gregory House is Vicodin-addicted, self-centered, and a brilliant diagnostician--and he does indeed discover--that most of his patients lie about something which makes his task of discerning the real from the deception just a bit more difficult.

So it is in voir dire. But why? The questions that are being asked don't often seem that personally important and when they are truly of an intimate nature (as with sex abuse history), they are typically asked outside the hearing of other jurors. So why would jurors lie about more routine things? Researchers have proposed multiple explanations.

• Jurors are intimidated (afraid of what others may think or of embarrassed about expressing their opinions).
• Jurors want to look good and thus give responses they think are socially positive.
• Jurors want to protect their self-image and self-esteem in front of all the courtroom observers and other prospective jurors.

While there are likely other reasons jurors lie, there is certainly agreement that jurors do lie (Keene and Handrich 2005). So, if you know it's likely to happen--what can you do to minimize it?

Believe it or not, there is one simple answer: Use a supplemental juror questionnaire (SJQ). When given privacy (and a thoughtfully-written questionnaire), jurors are more likely to engage in voir ecrire ("to write the truth"). Factors such as social discomfort, a desire to please, or an attraction to a fellow juror or jurors--can derail your voir dire before you know it.

Get it in writing--and then increase their comfort by reframing bias in a positive light.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth-anonymously and posthumously. -Thomas Sowell (1930 - )"

For more great tips, visit Rita's blog at:

Source: The Jury Room, 23 November 2009

Posted by John Jantsch: "Marketing podcast with Nick Morgan (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download - subscribe now via iTunes

Trust - can't get enough of that as a brand, business, or person these days. Everyone knows that, but what they may not know is that there are things each of is doing that may be unintentionally eroding trust - particularly when it comes to the topic of speaking and presenting.

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast Nick Morgan, author of Trust Me, talks about trust, authenticity and charisma and how anyone can use it to their advantage as a public speaker.

Charisma is a tricky thing, but I love his definition: The expression of emotion. It's a tool that can be learned and practiced.

Pay close attention to his thoughts on using or not using PowerPoint.

Check out a recent blog post from Nick: 10 Commandments of Public Speaking

Nick Morgan shows how anyone can be an effective speaker by presenting an image of authenticity and respect for their audience, whether in a group presentation or a one-on-one conversation. He presents a four-step process, perfected in his teaching at Harvard, that enables the reader to use their own personal speaking style while becoming a more persuasive and charismatic communicator and leader.

The four steps of Nick's system
1) Openness
2) Connection
3) Passion
4) Listening"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Duct Tape Marketing, 5 November 2009

Posted by Douglas Keene: "A recent report from the Pew Research Center focused on the partisan differences in various television news networks audiences. Specifically, they reported that Fox News attracts more Republicans while CNN and MSNBC attract more Democrats. We were not shocked.  An interesting caveat to this preference was that more Democrats listen to Fox News than Republicans listen to CNN or MSNBC.  Again, we were not shocked.

 An earlier Pew report looked at print media and reported that Republicans view the New York Times negatively by a margin of roughly 2:1 while Democrats see NYT positively by a 5:1 margin. Republicans like the Wall Street Journal and Democrats tend to like WSJ as well. When asked about radio news, NPR is also liked by both Democrats and Republicans (although Democrats like it a bit more).

So what does this have to do with litigation advocacy?

A lot. As a litigator on either side of the aisle, your task is to reach across the cultural divide and appeal to the hearts and minds of your jury.  Including the ones that are not predisposed to love your case.

• That means knowing what and how 'they' think.
• It means knowing what buzzwords open some minds and close others.
• It can mean either avoiding those buzzwords or strategically using them.
• It means tapping into universal values while avoiding landmines that elicit opposition to your client.

How do you do all those things? A simple way might be tuning into either Fox or CNN/MSNBC depending on what you're normal viewing/listening preferences are (do the opposite).

• Learn what "they" are thinking.
• Identify strategies to make your presentation more broadly appealing.
• Identify what you would do/say if you were opposing counsel. How would you counter that interpretation in your case presentation?
• How does your specific fact pattern play into the partisan divide in our country? What underlying values appeal to all of us?
• What specific words do you need to avoid?
• What images do you want to refrain from evoking?
• Think of your language as evoking 'we' not 'they' or 'us against them' images.

In short, do what those Democrats who are listening to Fox News are probably doing: know the opposition perspective and use that knowledge to inform your approach."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: The Jury Room, 2 November 2009