What’s up with the jury?
On one of our recent cases the client asked me if I was confident about going forward with the trial. I said that I was, but this did not seem to satisfy the client. Over the course of the next week, or so, I was continually asked the same question. Finally, I asked the client if they knew who sits on a jury?  If you review all the statistics available, you’ll discover that about 47% of American’s believe that UFOs have visited the planet, another 10% read tabloid newspapers that have articles about alien brain transplants that have occured to half of the members of the U.S. Senate, and another 12% believe that Elvis is still alive.
If you convert these numbers to a 12 person criminal jury, you would end up with 6 jurers that believe in UFOs, 1 jurer that believes in brain transplanted senators, and 1 jurer that knows where Elvis lives. How confident would you be putting your life into the hands of those people? My client got a new appreciation for the entire process and never asked me that question again.
On a side note, remember that the prosecution has to deal with these same people, and I believe that a good criminal defense attorney can handle these issues better than the government. The case in question resulted in a very favorable outcome for the client.
Some thoughts from Anthony Partipilo, Supervising Attorney for America’s Criminal Defense Group
