berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) (09/06/85)
> >The other type of challenge is the pre-emptive challenge. An attorney may > >object to a juror without showing cause using this challenge, and the juror > >is automatically excused. While an attorney may challenge for cause as much > >as he/she wishes, the lawyer get only a certain amount of pre-emptive > >challenges. The Supreme Court ruled that an attorney may not use the > >pre-emptive challenge to systematically exclude blacks from the jury. > > > >Craig Anderson > > So how is it proven that the lawyer is using his/her pre-emptive > challenges on this basis? Since cause need not be stated, how is the > racial cause determined? Is there a concomitant requirement to state > the cause for challenging any rejected juror, even if this was a > pre-emtive challenge rejection? (That is, does the court record have to > include what reasons the lawyer determined were the grounds for the > pre-emptive challenge? [This means that the lawyers would *have* to > state a reason even for pre-emptive challenges. Is this what this court > decision means?] Couldn't the lawyer simply use income, or job, or > "general demeanor" as his/her reason?) > > Will Perhaps one should abolish pre-emptive challenges. I do not understand their purpose. On the other hand, I read about lawyers using expert who gather sociological data about what kind of people may be more or less sympathetic with the defendant. It seems to be yet another trick which makes an expensive defence effective. I got an impression that there is a lot of complications in the trial law which benefit lawyers and rich people, and which are detrimental to all the others. They increase the cost of defence and jam the courts. Rich people await their trials at large, the poor ones do it in jails. Piotr
jpexg@mit-hermes.ARPA (John Purbrick) (09/10/85)
In a Boston-area case a few years ago, a group of black men was accused and convicted of murdering a Harvard student of Italian descent. (Basically, the football team was out slumming and got into a brawl.) The defendants won a new trial (and most of them were aquitted) after they were able to show that the prosecution had excluded blacks from the jury. But they gave considerably less emphasis to the fact that the defendants' lawyers had challenged all jurors with Italian names. A rotten system, no? I'd love to hear of a potential juror refusing to answer questions related to personal background on the grounds that jury-selection consultants were in the business of distorting the justice system, and challenging the judge to accuse him/her of contempt. Is a juror forced to participate in this kind of farce?