Deliberations

Someday, Your Facebook Juror Will Come

I swear they keep this blog in business, those social networking jurors. 

I didn't set out to cover that particular jury issue so heavily, but from the first week, when I set up searches to find topics to cover here, the juror blogs started showing up in my news feeds, so I wrote about them.  Today, although (really) I write about other things, it's the most common thing I'm quoted or interviewed or asked to speak on, and there are probably more posts here about social networking than any other topic.

"He beats his hand on the jury box."

So here come two more online jurors this week, frightening lawyers everywhere.  There's the Facebook juror in England who put a poll on Facebook to help her decide guilt or innocence.  And there's the blogging juror here who knows she can't write about the case, but thinks that "doesn't mean I can't give people a a glimpse of the people I am dealing with," and so gives a great sketch of each person in the courtroom.  ("The lead defense lawyer. When he is trying to make a point when questioning a witness he beats his hand on the jury box.  "So you *wham* are telling me *wham* that blah blah blah blah blah  BLAH! *WHAM*" )  The Facebook juror was dismissed; the word-sketch artist is still sitting, as far as we know.  (And I have to admit, I hope so.)

This is going to happen to you.  It's going to happen to you.  It's going to happen to you.

Four things to add to your trial task list:

1.  Ask.  Ask jurors in voir dire whether they write on line and if so where.  If you get a "yes" to that question, you have several tools:  (1) the judge can strongly impress on that particular witness that she is to write nothing about the trial, not even character sketches; (2) the lawyers can keep an eye on the juror's site during the trial; and (3) if there's time, you can jump on the juror's site before the jury is chosen to see if it contains anything of concern. 

2.  Look.  Simply running searches by jurors' names -- before the jury is seated if possible, after if not -- you can find non-anonymous blogs, of which there are many. 

3.  Watch.  Even if you've asked and looked, you can still have jurors writing about your trial that you didn't know about, on anonymous sites they did not disclose.  If you have enough people, assign someone to set up standing searches to try to catch these, using terms the juror might choose -- the location of the court, and the type of case it is.  It also makes sense to check on-line comments to news stories about the case, where you have the staffing to do it.

4.  Relax.  It's possible that none of these techniques will find the Facebook juror or the sketch artist on your trial.  Does that mean we're in a frightening new world with intolerable new rules?  I don't think so.  Remember that in the old days, both jurors probably would have had talked about the case in the same way, but in conversations with their friends, not on line -- and you wouldn't have found out about those either.  If anything, it's easier, not harder, to find chatty jurors than it was when they simply talked.

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Some of many related posts here:

• The Wasteland, one of the first posts on this blog
• A Trial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites
• The "blogging jurors" series, starting here

Scott Greenfield's take is here:  "It's clearly time to change the instructions to cover this, and means that we have yet another responsibility to check the internet each night during trial to see what our jurors are saying and doing.  Like we had too much free time during trial before."  Exactly.

(Photo by avlxyz at http://flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/2077892948/; license details there.)

Jury Notes From Elsewhere, November 23

Good things from last week: 

• I'm the last one to talk, but I wish Prof. Sam Sommers would post more often at his Psychology Today blog, The Science of Small Talk.  This week's post observes aggressive drivers, at very close hand.  "It's amazing how something as simple as sitting behind the wheel of a car can be enough to lead to such transformations in identity and behavior." 

• Zabin v. Picciotto, the case where Judge Mitchell Sikora let the jurors dress up for Halloween, was affirmed this week in Massachusetts, and picked up by David Giacalone at f/k/a , Bob Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch, and Massachusetts Lawyers' Weekly's blog The Docket.  David says, "Naturally, we’re all waiting to see what jury expert Anne Reed has to say about all this," which is very nice of him.  In fact, Deliberations has two posts about dress-up juries:  this one (which includes the classic section, "A short, incomplete history of dress-alike juries"), and this one. 

• On Thursday, I asked lawyers, "What do you think judges should do to improve voir dire where you practice?" Bobby G. Frederick at South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog responds, "In South Carolina, we could begin by having voir dire."  It's a thoughtful post, from a state which does clock in with the fastest jury selection in the country.  

• Thaddeus Hoffmeister at Juries reports on a trial that "ended in a mistrial before it began Tuesday when a prosecutor discovered three jurors lied about their criminal records." 

• Elliott Wilcox suggests that you think about the message you're sending with that cool glass of water you keep at counsel table. 

• Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice is fascinated by an amicus brief arguing that the jury has the right to know what the defendant's sentence will be.  

• Evan Schaeffer at Illinois Trial Practice Weblog tells you what to do as soon as the deposition is over.  Hint:  It's not "file the transcript." 

• Mark Bennett at Defending People has been working his way through the American Society of Trial Consultants' latest issue of The Jury Expert.  "I Want Angry Jurors With Low Self-Esteem," he concludes in reaction to Alison Bennett's piece on "just-world" jurors.  A few posts later, he considers how a male lawyer might take advantage of Elizabeth Parks-Stamm's research on women's reactions toward successful women, and I argue with him a little in the comments. 

Finally, a programming note:  I'm excited to be appearing tomorrow (Monday) on KQED, San Francisco Public Radio, on the "Forum With Michael Krasny" show.  The topic is "Judging Juries," and the rest of the panel consists of Chief Justice Ronald M. George of the Supreme Court of California; the reknowned jury scholar Neil Vidmar of Duke; and Sonia Chopra of the National Jury Project.  I'm honored to be even remotely associated with those people.  The show airs from 9:00 to 10:00 Pacific, and then should be available on line.     [Update:  I wasn't on the show after all, and the prominent consultant Howard Varinsky took the place of Chief Justice George.  Definitely worth listening to.]

(Photo by Ho John Lee at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hjl/101443399/; license details there.)

 

How Would You Improve Voir Dire?

On Tuesday, I reviewed "Building A Better Voir Dire," the article by Judge Gregory Mize and Paula Hannaford-Agor of the National Center for State Courts.  The article challenged judges to work creatively to help the actual practice of jury selection live up to the ideals most of us share.

Now it's your turn.  What do you think judges should do to improve voir dire where you practice? 

I'm serious; I'm collecting your advice.  A number of judges read this blog, I'm honored to say, and I'm sometimes asked to talk to judges' groups about this topic.  I'll collect your best answers in a post (or two?) here, and I'll pass them on in person as well.

Tell me what you think judges most need to change in voir dire -- in the comments below, on Twitter, on your own blog, or by E-mail.  (Keep it civil, of course, and constructive.)  If you have friends with ideas, tell them to send them along.  We'll see what happens.

(Photo by Laughlin Elkind at http://flickr.com/photos/wurzle/659315; license details there.)

Deliberations on Twitter

Every day there are too many interesting studies and stories and cases to write about here.  I've been sending a lot of them out without comment in Deliberations' "In The News" section, but lately I've been experimenting with sending the best ones out on Twitter.   

You know Twitter.  It's the free "microblog" site where millions of people talk to each other in "tweets" of 140 characters or less.  It's not for everyone (the three posts linked to in those three words caused a stir this week), but it's a unique way to communicate.  And I have a professional interest in knowing how social networks operate, or so I tell myself.  Anyway, I'm trying it out.

A day of tweets

So in the last day or so, for example, if you'd followed "@annereed" (that's me) on Twitter, you'd have seen these entries, featuring the "short URL" links that we all use on Twitter:

• Relationship of emotion and "rational deliberation" in death penalty cases, http://twurl.nl/unakty

• RT [that's "retweet" in Twitter talk, the equivalent of "forward"] @bobambrogi: Should jurors in Halloween costumes and free candy from lawyers be cause for reversal of verdict? http://tinyurl.com/6gkcot

• "I'll tell you what, we didn't think we'd be living to see him come home": mother of innocent man freed after 27 yrs http://twurl.nl/ktgpj4

• RT @HouCrimLaw [that's Mark Bennett]: New blog entry: I Want Angry Jurors With Low Self-Esteem http://tinyurl.com/694ljg; review of article in ASTC's new TJE mag.

• People (jurors) predict they'll behave better than they do, but there's a way to help them be more realistic. http://twurl.nl/unmi2g

• "Sleep helps people learn complicated tasks." http://twurl.nl/0sg0hw. Not that I'd know that personally. But it's relevant to tired jurors.

• "The viciousness that comes out in this is stunning," says Lori Drew's lawyer of jury questionnaire responses. http://snipr.com/5u5x0

You might also have seen Colin Samuels (his blog is Infamy or Praise) commemorating the 145th anniversary of the Gettysburg address by trying to render it in 140 characters, and Mark Bennett's thoughts on mercy, beautifully expressed in a short series of "tweets" starting here.

If you're on Twitter now, you can follow Deliberations here.  If you'd like to dip a toe in, Twitter has a good FAQ here to get you started.  One tip:  if you find that you like Twitter, run don't walk to www.Tweetdeck.com, to download a "desktop client" that makes Twitter's features much easier to use.  You may not stay forever -- I may not either -- but you have a professional interest in seeing how social networking sites operate too, and there's a lot going on out there.

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Are you using Twitter?  Or other social networks?  What do you think?

Related posts here:  A Trial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites

(Cartoon by Geek & Poke, Oliver Widder, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekandpoke/2159020334; license details there.)

Principle v. Practice: A Judge's Challenge To Improve Voir Dire

What do judges talk about when they talk about voir dire?  Judge Gregory Mize is gently challenging his colleagues to make voir dire better, by comparing a new set of inspiring goals to new data documenting a less inspiring reality.

 

If there were a blog devoted entirely to Judge Mize's work to improve the jury system, that blog would have plenty to talk about.  Judge Mize guest posted here about his trip to Russia for the first-ever "juror's summit" there.  In trials in his own courtroom, he asked jurors who had been silent through voir dire to speak up --resulting in eye-opening papers I wrote about here.  ("I'm the defendant's fiancee," one juror said.)

 

Judge Mize is retired from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He is currently a judicial fellow at the National Center for State Courts, where he is guiding NCSC’s National Jury Program. Now, with the NCSC's respected Center for Jury Studies director Paula Hannaford-Agor, he has written another paper.  This time they're talking to judges, in the ABA's Judges' Journal , and the article is "Building A Better Voir Dire."  (You can't get into Judges' Journal unless you're in the Judicial Division of the ABA, but Judge Mize and the Journal have both kindly agreed to let me post a copy here, all rights reserved.)

 

Telling the truth

 

How do you inspire reluctant judges to improve voir dire?  With quiet candor.  First, let's be clear about the problem:  judges and lawyers have different interests.

 

The parties and their lawyers want to learn as much as possible about the attitudes and life experiences of each venire member to know who they want to keep out of the jury box. But at times, lawyers obtain so little information that jury selection becomes a hunch game.

 

The trial judge, with dozens—or hundreds—of like-kind cases on his or her docket, wants to administer justice in a timely and efficient manner so that other cases can be given prompt attention. Speed can be a top goal for some judges. Others, however, share the lawyers' thirst for juror information in order to rule intelligently on motions to strike for cause. . . .

 

These competing professional interests are seldom resolved to anyone's satisfaction.

 

But there are, these authors say, two resources that let judges compare ideals to reality, and use the gap between them to improve.  Both tools are fairly new, and Judge Mize and the NCSC had a hand in both.  

 

Principles . . .

 

The first is the ABA's American Jury Project, "an intense effort to inspire judges and lawyers to improve jury trial practices."  Judge Mize was part of it, together with Ms. Hannaford-Agor's NCSC colleague Tom Munsterman.  "After twelve months of intensive work," say Judge Mize and Ms. Hannaford-Agor, "the group, composed of trial practitioners, judges, and jury experts from across the country, produced the ABA Principles for Juries and JuryTrials."   The central tenet on the quality of voir dire is Principle 11: "Courts should ensure that the process used to empanel jurors effectively serves the goal of assembling a fair and impartial jury."

 

What does that mean?  The Principles suggest it means a lot of things.  Like jury questionnaires in regular use.  On-the-record voir dire.  "Appropriate demographic data." Simply letting lawyers ask questions, "recognizing the special knowledge that each attorney possesses regarding case-presentation strategy and the characteristics of their witnesses."  (Judge Mize and Ms. Hannaford-Agor note that "empirical research has repeatedly documented that prospective jurors tend to respond more candidly to questions posed by attorneys than those posed by judges."  In many courts, including federal court here in Wisconsin, it's almost never done.) 

 

Most important, perhaps, this goal means that judges should stop working so hard to keep possibly biased jurors on the panel:  "[Principle 11] supports a low-threshold standard for court rulings on for-cause motions by stating that '[i]n ruling on a challenge for cause,the court should evaluate the juror's demeanor and substantive responses to questions. If the court determines that there is a reasonable doubt that the juror can be fair and impartial,then the court should excuse him or her from the trial.'"

 

. . . in practice?

 

The second tool is the NCSC's massive "State-of-the-States Survey," which Judge Mize and Ms. Hannaford-Agor helped author and which I've written about here.  This national study "provided the first comprehensive snapshots of jury procedures, operations, and practices in state and local courts," they now write, and "like box scores in the sports pages, presents several undeniables." Again, they're gentle but blunt:

 

The information-promoting techniques recommended in Principle 11—use of questionnaires and individualized questioning of prospective jurors—are hardly ever employed.

 

This article isn't a lecture, it's a set of questions.  "Might the ABA's adoption of the principles provide an opportunity for judges and lawyers to begin discussing what a more mutually desirable voir dire could look like? Is there likely agreement among bench and bar in one's home jurisdiction that the 'system' would be better served if we worked together to attain greater juror candor in cases?"  Many more questions follow, and the authors conclude:  "In this matter, you are the jury, and it may be time to render some verdicts."

 

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Related posts here:

•  When Judges Lead Jurors In Voir Dire
• "Your Honor, I Move To Strike Your Mother For Cause"
• Judge Posner And The Jury Trial

 

"Building a Better Voir Dire" was published in The Judges’ Journal, Volume 47, Number 1, Winter 2008. © 2008 by the ABA, Judge Mize, and Ms. Hannaford-Agor, reproduced with their kind permission.

 

(Photo by Shadowgate at http://www.flickr.com/photos/shadowgate/1231138267/; license details there.)

Jury Notes From Elsewhere, November 15

Some quick links for the weekend:

 

A nice story from The Life And Times Of A Texas Country Trial Lawyer about using voir dire to irritate and alienate jurors.  Moral:  "never try and convince someone that their beliefs are wrong and yours are right, just accept them as they are and for God’s sake, don’t continue to poke a bee hive with a stick."  (Thanks to Mark Bennett for the link, which I'm glad to include here even though TCTL's immediately previous post is called "If I Ever Need A Jury Consultant, I'll Hire A Barber."   I agree with parts of that post too, actually; see here.)

 

Great stuff as always from Elliott Wilcox on how to irritate and alienate your witnesses: serve them with subpoenas without telling them first, or telling them why.  

 

Thaddeus Hoffmeister at Juries reports on how Northern District of Illinois judge Milton Shadur ordered former Chicago alderman Edward Vrdolyak to pay the jurors' expenses after he entered a last-minute guilty plea on the first day of trial.

 

New York Personal Injury Law Blog-ger Eric Turkewitz's wife writes a terrific guest post on her day at jury duty.  Could a juror write this of you?  "I listened to the Plaintiff's attorney methodically question each of the 12 potentials, at first with interest and then with cynicism, annoyance and finally complete and utter boredom."  Reminder:  she's a plaintiff's lawyer's wife. 

 

Vickie Pynchon at Settle It Now Negotiation Blog draws lessons in persuasion from Barack Obama.   Couldn't we all.

 

And Mark Bennett is running a poetry contest at Defending People.  You should see what people are submitting -- some funny, some powerful.

 

(Photo by Ho John Lee at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hjl/101443399/; license details there.)

 

The Jury Expert, On Your Virtual Newstand Now

The fourth issue of The Jury Expert is out from the American Society of Trial Consultants.  The first issue was good, and each one since has been better than the one before.  The contents list of the November issue may make you want to drop what you're doing and read it all:

 

• "Discover the Power of Conceptual Persuasion," by Karyn Taylor, introducing the concept of "conceptual graphics"
• "Anticipate and Influence Juror Reactions to Successful Women," by Elizabeth J. Parks-Stamm.  I have a short comment following this article on how one might use Ms. Parks-Stamm's suggestions in real-world trials. 
• "What Does a Juror's Generation Mean to Trial Consultants?" by Patricia McEvoy and Eliza Shepherd, new research linking generation to attitudes and damages awards.
• "Do Liberals and Conservatives Punish Differently?" by Bryan Koenig.  It's comparatively easy to learn a juror's political leanings, especially these days -- but what do you do with that information when you get it?
• "Cross-Examination of the Narcissistic Witness", by Douglas Keene, a follow-up to Doug's article in the last issue on preparing those folks when you're on their side.
• "Just World Jurors," a research review by Alison Bennett on this much-studied group.
• "The American Jury: A Book Review," by Kevin Bouilly

 

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Related posts here (to Ms. Parks-Stamm's piece, that is, noting a similar paper she authored):  When Women Judge Women

 

Why You Need To Know Whether Your Jurors Blog

Asking jurors about their blogs really can help you.  I have evidence now.

 

I had the honor recently of speaking to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, on the topic of jurors and social networking.  I love this topic because people still really want to hear about it.  It won't be too long before lawyers all know what an RSS feed is and can explain the difference between a group and a wiki; but until then, I can say something about social networking that most of the audience doesn't know yet.

 

When I've talked about this to other audiences, though, I've gotten some resistance.  Lawyers don't like to ask about something as personal as a blog or a Facebook page, and they're not sure it's worth it.  They've heard the stories about jurors whose blogs would have justified a strike for cause, but there aren't many stories like that yet, and those jurors were in other people's trials in other jurisdictions.  Surely they wouldn't need to ask about blogs in their trial?

 

The first four blogs on the list

 

So this time I did a tiny experiment before my speech.  I went to Jury Experiences, the best collection of juror blogs, and took the first four blogs on the list on the day I was searching.  They were on the list because each blogger had been called for jury duty and blogged about it.  I've read many juror blog posts before, but this time I wasn't particularly interested in what they said about jury duty itself.  My question was:  if a lawyer had looked at that juror's blog on the day the juror appeared for jury duty, would there have been anything important there?

 

On all four blogs, there was.  Not necessarily something earthshaking, but in each case, something you would have wanted to know about that juror before you decided on your strikes.  Here they are:

 

Blog One:   Boredom Advanced, a blog by an art student.  On the day he was on jury duty, if you'd looked at his blog, you'd have seen that he and his roommate were wrongly accused of vandalism, by school officials who were abusive in their questioning, and he wasn't happy about it. 

So I call the guy when I get the chance and he starts trying to feed me this line of crap about how they're certain that this is either mine or David's fault and how they're leaning towards David. So they're basically looking for me to point a finger at him and give them the confirmation they need to slap a fine on him. Never mind the fact that none of us did it and they are strikingly absent of proof of anything . . .

 

I just want them to leave us alone.

We didn't do anything.

If high-handed police questioning (or employer questioning, or any other kind of questioning) is an issue in your case, you want to know about that blog.

 

Blog Two:  The Journal of Rhiannon Black, a metalworker and gardener who says "I am not in my early thirties. I would like to be."  If you'd looked at her blog on the day she was in court, you'd have seen this exchange with a guy she'd hired to help with her garden:

 

He transplanted my Creeping Rosemary.

[He says t]his is because he dug up the rosemary without knowing what it was or something. But really, it doesn't fit in the island.

What island? I don't have islands. I don't want islands. Oh my god what is he planning to do to my yard?

I told him that he had to respect some ground rules if he was going to continue working for me. Boy, was I getting the "you're a fat bitch" looks from him. But we'll see how it goes. If he comes back and starts working without speaking to me, again, I'm probably going to tell him to leave and not come back. He's not a bad worker but I don't want him doing what I don't want him doing and then expecting me to pay him for it.

Nothing wrong with that; I'd react much the same way if somebody moved my creeping rosemary.  But there's a sense here of how this juror will interact with others, and perhaps assess her own perceptions if they differ from those of others, that you're not likely to see in voir dire.

 

Blog Three:  AdBroad, the "oldest working writer in advertising."  It's a terrific blog about women in the advertising industry -- less introspective than many blogs, but the author's bio is wonderfully informative, and there are moments like this:

 

It's Sunday morning in August and I don't feel like writing. I feel like reading. Something offline. The Times, in its original, crinkly version. Then something bigger. Bookier. Something literary. Which makes me part of a dwindling crowd. According to Amy Stolls, Program Officer at the NEA, fewer than half of American adults now read literature.

Again, you could live without knowing this.  But voir dire won't bring out that reflection on her sense of her place in the larger world -- the world of other jurors -- and it would be a shame to miss it.

 

Blog Four:  Mars Girl On Two Wheels, whose "love of cycling has sustained me through some rough times in my life." The blog is about both the cycling and the rough times, and it is personal and revealing.  The week before she went to jury duty, this blogger wrote a long post about why she cares about equal rights for gay and lesbian couples:

 

Even as a heterosexual, I can relate on some level to being forced to hide aspects of oneself from the public eye to fit in. As a child in middle and high school, I submerged aspects of my personality in order to fit into the group mind of the adolescents in my high school. Though trite compared to having to hide your own sexuality, the toll to my mentality was detrimental. I found myself doubting my own self-worth and it took a lot of years to undo the damage I did. I guess that's part of the reason I've gone the complete opposite direction as an adult in highlighting the unique aspects of my personality, calling myself Mars Girl to constantly remind people that I feel I am different. I'm tired of hiding who I am so I've let myself out of my own closet to tell the world, "This is who I am; like it or leave it."

If there's a person in your trial who is marginalized in any way, you'd want to know about that juror's blog.

 

That's four blogs, randomly selected, and four blogs where lawyers would have seen something valuable if they had looked.  It's not a statistically valid study; but I'm convinced.

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Questions:  Are you asking jurors about their blogs yet?  What are you finding?

 

Related posts here:

• ATrial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites
• A Message From Erin
• Blogging Jurors, Part I (follow the links to II and III)
• If These Jurors Could Talk

(Photo by Annie Mole at http://www.flickr.com/photos/anniemole/85515856/; license details there.)

 

 

Can You Spot The "Fully Informed" Juror?

It finally happened.  After all these months, this blog got its first comment from the Fully Informed Jury Association, or someone claiming to represent that group.  You'll miss it if I just publish it as a comment to another post, so here it is on its own:

Voir dire is unconstitutional jury tampering.  Jury questioning arose as a result of the Fugitive Slave Act, in 1850, since northern juries refused to punish those who abetted runaway slaves.  Voir dire thus is the enemy of jury nullification of law, which is the best check on government tyranny and legalized oppression.

The practice of voir dire should be outlawed, not perfected. Our prisons are full of innocent people.  The drug, gun, tax and traffic laws are immoral.

Jury questioning and instruction is un-American, as is mandatory BAR membership.  Abolitionist Lysander Spooner opposed them all, as should you.

Long live freedom.

-The Jury

You need to know about organizations like this, at least while voir dire is still lawful.  Their focus is jury nullification, and their core belief is that "the highest and best function of the jury is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens guilty of breaking the law, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical prosecutions and bad laws imposed by a power-hungry government."  Their web site offers a juror handbook, various other juror guides, and brochures designed to let jurors know about, and encourage, jury nullification.

"Consider stating that you do not keep track of political issues"

Depending on your case, you might want as many of these folks on your jury as possible.  But you might not, and it's clear that at least some of them are tired of being struck for cause.  That's why my commenter objects to voir dire itself.  And it's why, even though the FIJA claims it "does not advocate . . . willful disobedience to the law", the site doesn't just teach the history of jury nullification.  It also gives clear guidance on how to lie your way through voir dire.  A brochure called "Who Owns Your Body?" advises:

If you want to defend an individual’s ownership of his or her body, you must first get on the jury. During jury selection, lawyers and judges try to remove informed people from juries. Power-corrupted lawyers and judges depend on seating jurors who will do whatever they are told by government, even in violation of good conscience, reasoning, common sense and constitutional law.

When called for jury duty and questioned about your understanding of the law or issues, consider stating that you do not keep track of political issues, and that you can apply the law as instructed by the court. If asked, suggest that you do not remember if you belong to any particular organizations because you get too many junk mail organizational solicitations. Imply an impartial attitude. 

High Noon

It's a stand-off, then.  You want to know whether you have an activist juror.  The juror wants to conceal his activism.  How will you recognize it?  You might start by reading some brochures.

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Questions:  Have you had jury-nullification activists on jury panels?  Did you learn it during voir dire, or after?  Criminal defense lawyers, if you knew you had one, would you always try to keep her? 

Notes:

1. Scott Greenfield may have given up on the hope of finding extreme jurors of any stripe in voir dire.  More on that later.
2. Related posts here: 
   • Recognizing The Activist Juror
   • The Rare Ruby-Throated Jury Nullification (a post that has disappointed perhaps more Googling birdwatchers than any other on the Internet)
   • Voir Dire Of The Week:  People v. Ensz

(Photo by philosophygeek at http://www.flickr.com/photos/philosophygeek/102489764/; license details there.)