Jeffrey T. Frederick, Ph.D. Researching Potential Jurors During Voir Dire      In many, if not most, jurisdictions, the list of potential jurors is made available to the parties at some point before the day jury selection begins. As a trial consultant, I am often called upon to conduct research on potential jurors before trial. This research consists of general Internet searches and utilizing sources like social media (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram), news media, publicly available databases (e.g., political contributions, parties in civil lawsuits, housing values, and other public records, etc.), and any custom databases developed specifically for the

September 9, 2013 Jeffrey T. Frederick, Ph.D. I was recently asked by the American Society of Trial Consultants (ASTC) to guest post on their"Deliberations" blog and here is the result. IN A WORLD . . . where the convening authority selects the entire pool of potential panel members . . . where the defense and prosecution each have potentially only one peremptory challenge, even in a death penalty case . . . where challenges for cause are the only realistic method for removing potentially biased members . . . No this is not the recent movie by the same name,

 November 5, 2012 Jeffrey T. Frederick, Ph.D. A relatively new strategy by litigants is to take their cases to the public, not through press conferences but through establishing a voice on the Internet. True, this is not new. Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson had websites that supported their legal cases, and former Chicago Governor Rob Blagoivich had a Facebook page. Discussions of these activities can be found in Chapter 8, Jurors and the Internet, of my book. Several interesting developments have occurred since the early days of litigant PR websites. First, getting the message out is not as cost-prohibitive as

December 14, 2011 Jeffrey T. Frederick, Ph.D. A murder conviction and death penalty sentence were reversed and remanded in part because of tweets by a juror during trial. In a potentially game-changing decision, the Arkansas Supreme Court in Erickson Dimas-Martinez v. Arkansas, addressed an issue different from many other cases of Internet abuse by jurors. The issue facing the court was whether a juror's violation of the court's instruction by tweeting about the case denied the defendant a fair trial, not whether the content of the posts reflected bias or prejudice against the defendant. As such, the facts of tweeting

October 13, 2011 Jeffrey T. Frederick, Ph.D. Sure, in highly publicized cases, we all ask potential jurors whether they have expressed an opinion to others or, perhaps, written a letter to the editor regarding the case. And we tend to rely on the answers jurors give—although I have been involved in a death penalty trial where a potential juror, as editor of a local newspaper, had "forgotten" that he had written an editorial supporting capital punishment. Fortunately, the defense attorney had a copy of the editorial. The Internet has vastly increased the opportunity for potential jurors to comment on cases

Jeffrey Frederick, October 3, 2011 Most voir dire questioning of potential jurors is conducted in a group setting. This setting offers unique challenges that must be overcome to be effective in jury selection. For those who may have missed it. The Jury Expert published an article on the challenges of conducting voir dire in a group setting and how to make the most of it. This article can be read online and/or downloaded by using the following link: Ten Dynamite Tips to Improve Your Results From Group Voir Dire by Jeffrey T. Frederick, Ph.D.  (March 30, 2011)