4 ms·

Where I live, the state/county defines eligible jurors as registered voters and/or licensed drivers over 18. So 'peers' meaning eligible voters in your communit

Where I live, the state/county defines eligible jurors as registered voters and/or licensed drivers over 18. So 'peers' meaning eligible voters in your community/county. And yes, the system is rightly more about eliminating bias. The process of voir dire is the opportunity for both sides to apply their own test. Also for special cases, and even not so special cases, jury questionnaires are an option[0]. These jury questionnaires can ask all kinds of questions to uncover bias and certainly involve basic comprehension. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_questionnaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_questionnaire

zamadatix 5y ago
That is likely how your state selects jurors but again it's not because you have a right to a jury of your peers (for any definition of peers). In the US the only right is to an impartial jury, which is indeed what voir dire tries to do, which has been ruled to be possible even with pre-filtering the juror pool. Jury questionnaires are made to provide a background for the attorneys during voir dire not as an aptitude test, as such they do not have an objective pass/fail score rather subjective information to allow attorneys to try to form the most impartial jury they can out of the pool. While the attorney could try to make an assumption of comprehension level based on the responses in the questionnaire 1) The attorney still has to consider lack of comprehension a negative thing for their chances at the case 2) The attorney has to be willing to use strikes for this reason vs other uses such as removing blatantly biased jurors 3) Even when both of the prior hold true the number of perceived "fails" may be higher than the number of allowed strikes. Therefore the ability to strike some from the pool for comprehension level is not the same as the pool being pre filtered for comprehension level. To be clear the GP proposal is the universal application an additional comprehension test one has to pass to be part of the pool prior to voir dire, not just that someone with low comprehension is allowed to be struck for that reason. Think of the proposal being like if your state randomly chose anybody instead of pre-filtering for eligible voters and GP proposed "we should filter out children and etc from the pool" with your response being "voir dire does that". Voir dire in that case may allow for the possibility of some of those people being filtered at the cost of a less filtered qualified jury of adults but it wouldn't be a replacement for pre-filtering. The same is true of the proposal on a minimum comprehension pre-filter, whether you agree with the pre-filter or not it's not the same as having the ability to filter some people in voir dire.

zamadatix 5y ago

That is likely how your state selects jurors but again it's not because you have a right to a jury of your peers (for any definition of peers). In the US the only right is to an impartial jury, which is indeed what voir dire tries to do, which has been ruled to be possible even with pre-filtering the juror pool. Jury questionnaires are made to provide a background for the attorneys during voir dire not as an aptitude test, as such they do not have an objective pass/fail score rather subjective information to allow attorneys to try to form the most impartial jury they can out of the pool. While the attorney could try to make an assumption of comprehension level based on the responses in the questionnaire 1) The attorney still has to consider lack of comprehension a negative thing for their chances at the case 2) The attorney has to be willing to use strikes for this reason vs other uses such as removing blatantly biased jurors 3) Even when both of the prior hold true the number of perceived "fails" may be higher than the number of allowed strikes. Therefore the ability to strike some from the pool for comprehension level is not the same as the pool being pre filtered for comprehension level. To be clear the GP proposal is the universal application an additional comprehension test one has to pass to be part of the pool prior to voir dire, not just that someone with low comprehension is allowed to be struck for that reason. Think of the proposal being like if your state randomly chose anybody instead of pre-filtering for eligible voters and GP proposed "we should filter out children and etc from the pool" with your response being "voir dire does that". Voir dire in that case may allow for the possibility of some of those people being filtered at the cost of a less filtered qualified jury of adults but it wouldn't be a replacement for pre-filtering. The same is true of the proposal on a minimum comprehension pre-filter, whether you agree with the pre-filter or not it's not the same as having the ability to filter some people in voir dire.