Word: veniremen
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Three housewives, a school-cafeteria cook, an electrician, a pipe fitter, a secretary, a gas-company clerk, a grocer, two factory workers and a former state appointee were making history. Never before had a federal jury drawn from Mississippi veniremen convicted white defendants in any civil rights case...
...bench, Johnson perched half-moon spectacles on his patrician nose; his brown eyes scanned a document in the Conner case. He peered up from under bushy brows; a hush fell. The room was jammed with veniremen: Negroes as well as whites, women as well as men-a Johnson jury. Only one Negro survived defense challenges-an elderly Negro brickmason who later voted for conviction-but that might have happened in northern Maine. At one point, a defense lawyer mocked a Negro witness in the patronizing accents of Catfish Row. Objection by the prosecution. "Sustained," snapped Johnson. "Such remarks have...
...Real Start. Voir dire is an art practiced largely in U.S. state courts. British judges simply call twelve veniremen at random without even asking their occupations. American federal judges usually do the questioning themselves. But in most state courts, lawyers are freely permitted to use voir dire not only to select jurors but to "condition" them. "Voir dire is really the start of a criminal trial," says F. Lee Bailey. "If you do it carelessly, you can lose a case by the time you get a jury together...
Though no defense lawyer can eliminate all pretrial opinion, he can diminish it by asking veniremen exactly what they have read in the press-and then prod them to reconsider it entirely in terms of reasonable doubt. Even if they still show prejudice, the attorney may accept them: some people yearn to prove themselves unprejudiced. Moreover, lawyers commonly ask jurors in advance to guarantee disregard for this or that messy fact ("Will you disregard the defendant's adultery?"). Not for nothing does Percy Foreman devote as much as ten days to voir dire. "Once we chose the jury...
...answer by itself did not satisfy Martin. He rejected many a positive-sounding venireman because his manner showed a sign of unsureness that might possibly aid the defense. To confirm it. he asked: "Would you sign a verdict of death?" Faced with that specter of personal responsibility, some veniremen backed down...