Word: juror
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...insisted that he had been in Hoffa's confidence at the time of that trial. Hoffa, he said, had asked him to come to Nashville, told him "there might be some people he wanted me to talk to. He said that they were going to get to one juror and try to get to a few scattered jurors and take their chances." Partin quoted Hoffa as saying "I've got $15,000 or $20,000 to get to the jury." When he decided to leave Nashville temporarily, Partin said, Hoffa "told me when I came back he might...
...Impartial. The assumption that a juror's personal knowledge of the case would ensure justice was questionable from the start, and the notion spread that if a juror had information about the crime, he ought to serve as a witness instead. By the 18th century, the practice of disqualifying such jurors was generally accepted, and in its brand-new Constitution, the fledgling U.S. Republic guaranteed defendants the right to trial by an impartial jury of their peers...
State criminal codes and common law spell out a variety of reasons for which a prospective juror may be disqualified by the judge for prejudicial cause-actually witnessing the crime, opposing the death sentence in a capital case, or simply admitting bias against either side...
Along with this basic safeguard, the law has been steadily liberalized to grant both defense and prosecution the right to eliminate a juror if they merely suspect, but cannot prove, he harbors a prejudice. Such peremptory challenges are strictly limited, and their number varies from state to state. In federal courts they range from three for each side in civil cases to 20 in a capital case. Conscientious lawyers exercise their right to disqualify a juror with the precision of a surgeon, the intuition of an actor, the guesswork of a tea-leaf reader. Professor Harry Kalven Jr., director...
Inevitable Liars. Experienced lawyers have arcane theories about choosing and challenging a juror. Clarence Darrow believed that Negroes, Jews, Irish and Mediterranean peoples make sympathetic jurors for the defense.* He warned against choosing Prohibitionists, Northern Europeans, Presbyterians and Baptists, but suggested dropping all guidelines in the case of the man who laughs. "A juror who laughs hates to find anyone guilty," he said. Pierre Howard, an Atlanta defense attorney, has kept a card file on jurors for 29 years. Butchers and barbers, he says, make bloodthirsty jurors. In a robbery case, he would challenge a filling-station attendant...