Speaker 1: So, conducting voir dire, picking a jury, how do you do it? The number one thing you need to remember is who is the right juror for the other side and who's the right juror for your side. So, what you want to do is get rid of the leaders for the other side. So, have another person with you sitting at the table that can take notes for you. They can also look up social media stuff, so whenever the jury comes out, you'll get a list of the juror names and it'll have a number like juror number one, one, John Smith. And what you want to do, as soon as you start hearing something from them, like where they live, if there's a questionnaire that will be asked, you want to start looking up social media stuff, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever it may be. So, just take a picture of the panel, the people, send it to somebody else. You may have multiple people working on this. So, when you're talking to them, use plain language. So think about like if you're having a beer with somebody at the bar, you're not talking in legalese, you're talking in plain language. So for questions, use open-ended questions. So tell your theme, have your theme ready, tell your story, but you want to be asking open-ended questions. Have topics, but not a script. So kind of big picture items, if you will, there, but don't go by a script, don't be reading a script. So you want to be talking maximum 10% of the time. So have them talk 90% of the time. That's a good voir dire. When the panel is talking 90% of the time, that's a great voir dire. So when you do talk, don't lecture. You know, you ask them questions, you listen, and then follow up based on what they say. So let me tell you one question that is guaranteed to get everyone's attention. You ask a juror, what do you think about what Mrs. Jones just said? Then the whole panel is like, oh shit, I wasn't listening. He may call on me to ask you, I don't want to look like an idiot in front of him, I better listen. And then whatever that person says, you always follow up with, why do you feel that way? And then you just listen. So if there's silence, that's okay, you don't have to get uncomfortable with it, sometimes people keep talking if there's a lot of silence. So after all that's done, you have cause challenges and you have preemptory challenges. So cause challenges, that's just, hey, these people cannot be fair for whatever reason. If they can't be fair for whatever reason, you get an unlimited number of cause challenges. So say judge, we move for cause on this person, they can't be fair because of whatever reason. So if that's denied, then you're going to use one of your preemptories, and then depending on the case, you may have three, you may have six. Preemptories are challenges that you can get rid of people for whatever reason you want, can't be race or gender or religion, whatever, there's some protected class, but you just want to get rid of the leaders for the other side. Those are the only people you need to really, really get rid of. And of course, the people who obviously say they cannot be fair. So if, let's just say somebody is a cause challenge, potentially, okay, great. You ask the panel, first of all, you embrace that. Who agrees with Mrs. Jones on that? And then you have your assistant to write down whoever that is. You also want to call their names out and their juror numbers, that preserves the record. And then you use leading questions to preserve the cause issue. This is the only time you're going to use leading questions with the panel. Now, last, you want to save a good question for the end. So there's primacy and recency. We always remember what, at the beginning, at the end, you kind of forget, kind of what's in the middle, but always kind of end on a high note. So then you ask the judge for cause challenges, preserve the issue before the jury's sworn. So let's say the judge says, no, I'm not going to grant that cause challenge. All right, well, I'll use the preemptory on that one. Then you have to identify what juror you would have struck if you had an additional preemptory. So you identify that juror and that juror has to be sworn. In other words, they have to be on the jury. Lastly, you want to renew any objections or motions that were filed before the jury was sworn. So you always want to preserve everything for appeal. So I tried over a hundred jury and non-jury trials to a verdict that made a lot of mistakes over the years, but hopefully that will help you when you're picking your jury. Until next time, this is Gray from GrayTest.com. Remember, law is not black or white, it's gray.