Hi welcome back to finally revealed in this episode I want to follow up on our jury duty Series with the questions that the attorneys and the judge may ask in voir dire again, this is the process or this is the part of the process where the prospective jurors are in the courtroom and There are questions being posed either by a show of hands as to Whoever how many people has had this happen or how many people are know about this. Then there may be specific follow-up questions directed to the individual people who raise their hand or don't raise their hand or otherwise. The whole process in most states starts with a questionnaire . The questionnaire is filled, partially filled out by your registration either registered voter or whatever means that that state collects the information to decide who might be called for jury duty,. So that will usually include your name and address Your address matters because if you are no longer living at that address Where that's the address where they are pulling people for the jury and In that province that that county or that parish, depending upon where or what state you live in, those local courts are looking for local jurors. So your residence is important. If that information is not correct when you are pulled for jury duty make sure to tell them as That may be a reason to excuse you because the eligible jurors are supposed to be those people living in the community where the case is filed. So that's number one. For federal court the area is larger. Some states have one federal district that's the entire state, but they had courts sitting in different places so everyone in the whole state is eligible to be called for those/ Other states have several - four, five, six separate districts and those are geographically based also/ So you want to make sure your address matches up with where you are called for court The next thing on the questionnaire is going to be your in place of employment and this will be requested of you at the time or around the time that you are called for jury duty or maybe even that morning, but usually it's in advance. So the questionnaire will have who you are, your name, your address, your age, your employer and they may have other information about whether you served on another jury in the previously and other types of identifying information. There may be extra things for different places. So that is the information that the court has, meaning the judge, and the attorneys who are going to try the case. So they have this information. Then the attorneys are going to take turns asking questions of you the panel; the venire. Look at the people who are in the courtroom. They will ask you do you know Tte attorney and they'll say the name. They'll ask you if you know the if there's a company involved if there are individuals involved? The defendant; they'll ask you if you know the defendant. They may ask you do you know the names of some of the witnesses? If you have a relative, a neighbor or someone associated with any of these people you need to raise your hand If that's the designation they say, " raise your hand if you know mr.. Jones" or "How many people have banked a Bank of America or have accounts there". If Bank of America is a party they may ask you that. They may ask you if you own stock in any of the companies if there are corporations involved. If it is a criminal case They will ask if you've ever been the victim of a crime. If you've ever been the victim of a crime similar to the one in the case. If you have ever testified in court before. If you have ever participated on a jury; that will be on the questionnaire. Now they also, if it's a medical malpractice case, they will say "has anyone never had an operation"" Has ever anyone ever had an operation that they thought was botched? So they will ask questions. Listen to these questions. The questions will tell you what the case is about. So if that prompts you to have some information, (you know) I didn't have a bad surgery, but my grandmother had a bad surgery at General Hospital and my family sued. So that is information they're going to want to know. They will ask you then maybe if you did sue how did it was it settled? did it go to court? Those types of things. Just because you have information on one of these categories doesn't mean you'll be stricken or a challenge will be used against you.. They're just trying to get the information, The fact that you your family sued and won may be very beneficial to the plaintiff so they for sure want to keep you, but the defense may not want to. So that's what they're weighing and they're going to evaluate all of the answers to choose there to make their challenges so that they can hopefully end up with the jury that they think will be most fair to their side. Either in the middle of the attorneys' questions or afterwards, the judge may or may not have follow-up questions. The judge may recognize someone then the judge may want to disclose that they know someone in the room even if that person hasn't identified Or raised their hand that they know the judge . Or theyre a neighbor or they're in Sunday school together or their kids play together, something like that. So all of that information they want to get out and in my other video I tell you why they want this information .So you want to watch that.? Other questions they may ask will be follow up questions to the questionnaire. If your employer is listed and that business is similar to one of the companies in the case, they may ask you about your position. They may ask if you know certain things either HR processes if it's a some type of an employment case. They may ask you about what you did in that job or what types of? products your company makes or if you were involved in that if there maybe is a product liability case or a safety case or there was an injury. They may ask you if it's a car wreck case if you have ever been involved in a car wreck. They may ask you if you've ever received a traffic ticket if that's involved. They may ask you if you've ever been the victim of a theft if it's a criminal case and there's a theft. They will , if they say, " has anyone here ever had someone die without a will in their family?" and they may have you raise your hand . They may then continue with general questions, or they may get more specific. That's going to depend upon the time that the court has allowed. The court will allow a certain amount of time for the attorneys to question the venire a and they may cut them short if they go on and on. I've also been involved in some cases where the people asked very few questions and I was shocked because I usually want to know quite a bit about the people so that I can see what their experience is and and what their judgment is and any connections that they may have. There is nothing that you need to study for, there's nothing in particular that you need to say and there are really no magic words other than "based upon an answer or a question you wouldn't be able to fairly and impartially Judge and evaluate the evidence that comes in against the instructions that are given." Other than that, they just want the information and you should give it to them because the ultimate injury would be if someone does not disclose some information and then that is material to some party in the case or their claims that causes a mistrial and then another jury is going to have to come in later and start all over again on this case and we don't want that to happen. I hope this was helpful to you. If you are in jury duty And you received some questions that you think are unusual that I didn't cover, please leave them in the comments below. Give me a thumbs up if you learned something or if this was helpful,. Please subscribe to see the other videos and come back and see me next time. Thanks for watching!
