Ten Dynamite Tips to Improve Your Results From Group Voir Dire

In the last edition of TJE, Charli Morris shared some thoughts on voir dire and jury selection. I would like to extend that discussion, focusing on the challenges faced in questioning jurors in a group setting. While individual, attorney-conducted questioning has been shown to be superior to group questioning,[i] the norm is usually some form of group-conducted voir dire questioning, either solely group questioning or group questioning with limited individual questioning based on topic areas, e.g., pretrial publicity, death penalty views, or potentially sensitive topics areas. Given the prevalence of some form of group questioning, our challenge is to employ methods that increase juror participation and disclosure in this setting. What follows are ten tips to meeting this challenge.[ii] Some or all of these approaches may be applied in your jurisdiction depending on the rules of the court and the trial judge.

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