The Polarizing Effect of Jury Consultants

 Introduction

            Jury selection can be a tricky and complicated process for each side involved in trial. As a result, many lawyers have turned to Jury Consultants, in an effort to find the right members of their jury pool. But Jury Consultants do not come without some stigmas that many opponents would argue outweigh the benefits. Through those arguments, these opponents point to the consultants delving into the private lives of some potential jurors, as well as other problems such as efforts to exclude intellectuals or certain people in the voir dire process.

            Even so, the proponents of Jury Consultants make a compelling argument that strives to show the true efficacy of employing these professionals for trials. Accordingly, while the debate continues to warrant intriguing arguments on both sides, the use of Jury Consultants, when used effectively, can provide clear insights into a potential venire and can provide attorneys with useful information that will allow for a more appropriate panel of jurors.

Benefits of Jury Consultants

            Of the many benefits that Jury Consultants can provide in voir dire, the most impactful is the ability for those consultants to find information on jurors that are not otherwise readily accessible. For example, Jury Consultants can find biases that may be lurking due to a juror’s views toward the trial at the outset. Those biases could be quite problematic, and a competent attorney would look to strike those individuals for cause, or at least with a peremptory strike. Those biases could simply come from a potential juror’s employment or socioeconomic status—factors that would not otherwise be noticeable to the attorneys. Indeed, Jury Consultants can extract much valuable information at the first major point in a trial: voir dire.

            Other benefits provided by Jury Consultants include visual aids for attorneys and jurors, mock trials, and even opinion polls. Those opinion polls are often used to elicit biases, as was mentioned already; however, they can also provide simple “earmarks” for attorneys to refer to during the actual trial. This means that, while witnesses testify or evidence is presented, attorneys can use those opinion polls or questionnaires to get a more accurate view as to the jurors’ thought processes during those moments.

            But Jury Consultants certainly do not come without opposition. Much of that opposition advocates that these professionals taint the jurors, which causes much more harm than good.

Problems Caused by Jury Consultants

            There is an argument about the constitutionality of employing these psychologists as Jury Consultants. The argument claims—quite effectively, in fact—that such science improperly imbalances the scales of justice. More often than not, Jury Consultants are being hired in order to simply win the case, not to ensure a fairer trial. That’s where the constitutionality concerns come in. The Sixth Amendment, which aims to ensure a jury of one’s peers, can be extremely restricted by the use of these consultants.

            Another problem that exists centers around the optics of hiring these professionals. Jury Consultants are not called in for unimportant cases; they are hired for high-profile trials. That is common knowledge among many members of a potential jury pool. So when those jurors realize that a Jury Consultant has been hired for their trial, it becomes more apparent to the members of voir dire that this is a high-profile case. The issues then created are that potential jurors may be more inclined to try and withhold biases or even truthful information in order to participate in an “important” case. While many potential jurors may already be aware of a trial’s significance, the weight of that significance is certainly amplified by the existence of a Jury Consultant.

            These are merely some of the arguments against the policy of hiring consultants for the voir dire process. Other concerns include the follow-up questions and behavior by the Jury Consultants which can serve to introduce bias into the case that was not already there. Again, these concerns are certainly not without merit, and they create quite a compelling argument.

Conclusion

            While there are many intriguing arguments that would squash attorneys’ abilities to employ these Jury Consultants, the overall benefit certainly outweighs these “cons.” The idea of a trial is to create a panel of jurors with the least amount of bias and the greatest ability to render a competent verdict. As such, Jury Consultants can serve to improve that process to more accurately ensure an adequate jury panel.