Speaker 1: Hi, it's Elliot Wilcox from TrialTheatre.com and I want to give you some tips that will help improve the way you're doing your jury selection. Now when a lot of people come in and people are asking me for my advice, they go, Elliot, what sort of questions am I supposed to be asking in cross-examination? And a lot of times they've got these scripts that they've seen from other people, basically looks like scripts of questions that they're supposed to ask. Here's what you're supposed to ask if you're the plaintiff in a med mal suit. Here's what you're supposed to ask if you're the defense in a slip and fall case. Here's what you're supposed to ask if you're the prosecutor on an armed robbery case. Here's what you're supposed to ask if you're the defense attorney in a DUI case. And you know what? There's a lot of good stuff out there. But really when it comes down to it, at the end of the day, you can't go with a script. You've got to be conversational. You've got to get these jurors to talk, and reading off of a script never gets jurors to talk. So really what you're looking to do is you're looking to ask questions that are your questions, that are good questions, that get the jurors talking. Now where do you come up with these types of questions? If you've been watching a lot of other trials, if you've gone and seen other people, you've probably seen them ask a variety of questions. It's good research. But what you need to do is you need to come up with your own stuff. Now how many times have you heard other attorneys asking about what people's bumper stickers are on their cars, or what magazines they subscribe to, ask about where they work, or how long they've worked there, and things like that. A lot of generic stuff. And a lot of it, I think when we ask, we ask it because we saw other lawyers ask it, and we think that we're expected to ask the exact same thing. But you want to know a secret, at least you want to know an opinion as to why I think the judges have taken away jury selection from most of us. They took it away because we were doing such a bad job of asking jury selection questions. We'd go up and we'd spend half an hour, an hour, a half a day, a full day, multiple days asking questions. We'd spend all this time asking questions. And you know what? At the end of the day, we weren't asking anything that was important. We asked them about what type of pets they had. We asked them about where their wife worked five years ago. We asked them about how long they've lived in the county. Who cares? Who cares? Does knowing that stuff, does that shape the way they're going to decide the case? I don't think so. I've got a real quick belief about jury selection. I think that what we need to find out, we need to learn about people's beliefs, attitudes, and life experiences. I usually go ABL, attitudes, beliefs, and life experiences. That's what we want to find out about jury selection. That's what we need to find out about these potential jurors. But so many of us are afraid to ask good questions during jury selection. The reason we're afraid to ask is because we've heard that you can poison a jury panel. You ever heard that? Oh, I'm afraid to ask about a certain thing because I don't want to poison the jury panel. I don't want someone to come out and ruin the rest of the jury panel. Never going to happen. As a matter of fact, it's impossible, almost impossible, to poison a jury panel. Let me give you an example. Right now, you have an attitude about Walmart. You have an attitude about police officers. You've got an attitude about tasers and whether they should be used or not. You've got an attitude about insurance companies, about plaintiff lawyers. You've got an attitude and a belief and a life experience already based on how you feel about Walmart tasers, police officers, trial lawyers, etc. I'm willing to bet. Look, I think I'm a pretty good trial lawyer with a lot of experience under my belt. I think I'm almost 200 jury trials and more than 10,000 hours in the courtroom. I think I'm a pretty good trial lawyer at this point. But I'll tell you something. I don't think I can spend 5, 10, 15 minutes, half an hour, half a day and change your attitude or your belief about Walmart or police or tasers or trial lawyers or insurance companies. I think you've already got an opinion made up. And I don't think there's much that I can do or say that's going to change that opinion. It's the exact same thing with your jurors. So let's say that you've got a juror out there. Let's say you're doing a DUI case because those are pretty easy. Plaintiff's lawyers can do them if there's injuries. Defense lawyers can do that on the civil side. Prosecutors and PDs. Basically everybody can deal with a DUI case, right? Let's say that I ask someone their views about police officers. And I've got one juror over here and he says, man, I can't stand police officers. I hate police officers. I had a bad experience. Let me tell you all about my bad experience with a police officer. Here's why I don't trust police officers. Here's why I don't like police officers. Here's why I would never respect a police officer. Here's why I think police officers are the worst people ever created. Whatever. He goes on and on and on. Maybe he spends 5, 10, 15 minutes talking about how much he can't stand police officers, he can't trust police officers. Do you for one minute think that his attitude and his personal life experiences with bad police officers is going to change the views of everyone else in that jury box? If you do, I think you're deluded. Each of them has their own attitude, their own belief about police officers. There's another juror over here who got saved from a burning building by a police officer who rushed in despite all threats to himself, rushed in and saved this kid. She's not going to suddenly go, oh, police officers are bad because this guy over here is lipping off about them. And you know what, he's not going to change his mind because she talks about her experience and how good she thinks police officers are. Their attitudes and their beliefs and their life experiences are set in stone by the time they come into the courtroom. And I don't care how good an attorney you think you are, you're not going to change those attitudes, those beliefs or those life experiences. You're not going to get them to put them aside. So what are you supposed to do during jury selection? What you need to do is you need to ask the right questions that expose those attitudes, those beliefs and those life experiences and the ones that matter so that when they go back in the jury deliberation room, you've got people who are willing to listen to your case. How do you go about forming those questions? Here's kind of my guideline. Imagine for a second that I'm one of your potential jurors. You choose me, you don't know much about me, you put me on the panel, I listen to your entire case. At the end of the case, I go back in and I go into the jury deliberation room. The instant that the jury deliberation door shuts, and I'm back in there getting ready to make a decision about your case, the instant the door shuts, one of my best friends comes over to you and says, oh my God, you put Elliot on the panel? Didn't you know? And then they proceed to tell you an attitude, a belief or a life experience that I have that horrifies you. What attitudes, what beliefs and what life experiences would horrify you if you found out about them a second after the jury deliberation door shut? For example, with our DUI case, let's say you're the prosecutor and you find out that I've got, I don't know, 22 prior DUIs. It would be a little concerning, right? Or if you're the defense attorney in that case, you find out that I had a family member or someone I cared about was injured by a drunk driver, you'd go, oh my God, I wish I'd known that beforehand. It terrifies me that you're back there deliberating with that life experience in your background. That's the type of stuff that we need to start thinking about. What attitudes, what beliefs and what life experiences terrify you? What scares you the most about your case? You find that out. And that's the stuff that we're going to ask about during jury selection. That's the stuff that we're going to form our questions about. None of this crap about magazines or bumper stickers or where they were. None of that stuff about generic stuff. Get up there and do a jury selection that asks about serious questions, serious stuff that really makes a difference in your case. Now, there's a whole other section on how to get jurors to talk and there's a whole other art of getting jurors to talk, but this video is just about how do you pick the questions that you're going to ask. Now, go through. Think about your case for a moment. Basically, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you some homework here. Spend some time thinking about your case and go, if a juror walked into the jury deliberation room and they had this particular attitude, it would screw my case. There's no way I could win if they had that attitude. Make a list of those attitudes. That's the stuff you need to start writing down. That's the stuff you're going to need to ask about. What about beliefs? If they believe a certain thing, like they believe that there's a certain cap on the amount of damages someone should be entitled to receive. They believe that police officers always act in a certain way in a certain situation. They believe that people accused of crimes would always talk if they were really innocent, that they would always be willing to talk to the police. Start thinking about those beliefs. Make your list. Part two, you've got your list of attitudes, now you've got your list of beliefs. What are the things that would scare you the most? Because really, keep in mind, you are not looking to put jurors on this panel. Your jury is already selected. If you don't do a thing, the first six or the first twelve people that are sitting there are going to be your jury. What you're looking to do is you're looking to find attitudes, beliefs, and life experiences that say, you know what? You've got to get out of here. You've got to get off my panel. The reason you're doing that is because you can strike these folks for cause if you write your questions well enough. We'll go into some other video, maybe some other time I'll talk about why a cause challenge is actually worth two challenges and why it's so much better. What you're looking to do is you're looking to find reasons to get rid of these jurors. That's all you're looking to do. Hey, it's nice to have people who are rooting for us, but let's make sure it's jury deselection. We're getting rid of the people we can't have, the people we can't stand, the people who scare us. Let's make sure that we get rid of them. You've made your list of attitudes. You've made your list of beliefs. Now, ask what life experiences could a person have that would terrify me? What life experiences do they have that if I saw them, I would go, oh my God, I cannot have that person on the jury? With a DUI case, the prior DUI arrests, the family member who was hurt by a drunk driver, bad experience with a police officer, exceptionally good police experience with a police officer. What are the attitudes, what are the beliefs, what are the life experiences that terrify you? You make a list of those and now you've got the backbone of where your jury selection starts. Now you've got the backbone of the questions you're going to ask. Here's the thing, judges will let you go on and on and on for hours if you're asking questions about stuff like this, because they know it's valuable information that you're getting. If you start wasting time talking about the junk that we see most of the time in jury selection, yes, the judge is going to cut you off. He's going to go, no more jury selection for you, like the soup Nazi. No soup for you, no jury selection for you, they're going to cut you off. But you ask about real stuff and you can justify why you need another 15 minutes, why you need another hour, why you need another day of jury selection to probe those attitudes, beliefs and life experiences. Judges are willing to work with you when you show them that there's a valid reason that you're asking questions. Basically, what you're doing, you're saying, judge, if a person has this particular attitude, this particular belief, this particular life experience, I can't win my case. It's impossible. I'm entitled to find that information out before they go back in the jury deliberation room. What's the judge going to do? He's not going to say, no, let me just give you a reason to have me appealed and give me a reason to try this case again. The judge is going to go, no, that sounds like a valid reason and why you should be allowed to further that line of questioning. I'll cut this short. The important thing is, find that list of attitudes. Find that list of beliefs. Find that list of life experiences that would absolutely terrify you, that would make it impossible for you to win if a juror had those attitudes, beliefs, or life experiences. You make a list of the stuff that scares you the most, stick to that list. Ask about those particular attributes. When you do, your jury selection is going to be phenomenal. You're going to have more insight into the jurors than you've ever had before. You're going to do a better job of jury selection than ever before. At the end of the day, your verdicts are going to reflect it. I hope this video has been helpful. Part of what I do is I try and give away a lot of trial advocacy training tips. I try and give away a lot of trial tips that will help you win trials, that will help you persuade jurors, that will help you win jury trials, non-jury trials, whatever. If you want more stuff like this and you want some awesome tips on how to pick juries, how to do opening statements, how to do directs, cross, closings, I've got two special reports I want to send you. One is the 10 Critical Mistakes that Trial Lawyers Make. The other one is How to Successfully Make and Meet Objections. I also want to send you another book, The Art of Cross Examination by Francis Wellman. Maybe you've heard of it. It's a fantastic book on trial skills, especially on cross examination. In addition to that, I want to send you new tips every single week that will help you learn how to improve your trial skills. Last but not least, if you go ahead and do that, I will put you on the advance notice list and whenever I come up with more videos like this, I'll let you know so that you're the first to find out and you're the first to be able to download it. So if you want any of that stuff, a whole bunch of fantastic stuff for you. It's free. All you've got to do is go to www.trialtheater.com. Go ahead, sign up and I will send you all that cool stuff for free.