Legal Question in Criminal Law in Michigan

Re: Jury selection.

First, thank you for your above-the-call-of-duty service in our court system. Second, I am sorry that you see the process of being overly intrusive. Part of the judge's job is to protect jurors from over-intrusiveness, so if the questions cross the line the judge can/will stop it. If you are asked questions that you think are too personal or embarrasing, it is ok for you to ask the court to be able to answer these questions in chambers (with the judge and lawyers but not in front of the entire courtroom). We do this all the time. It adds to the clock, but protects that juror (which is even more important than the clock).

In Hollywood (real life and make-believe), we see every trial having a "jury consultant" and efforts being made to look into the backgrounds of every juror. In MY reality as an assistant prosecuting attorney, that does not happen. Speaking only about my experiences in one county (so this can differ around the state), we are not given much information by the court about jurors before the trial begins. Many times, we only get the list of names, edited copies of the information sheets the juros fill out, etc. just before the jury walks into the courtroom. We do not get personal info (like d.o.b.s, SSNs, driver's license numbers, home addresses, etc.) that would even let us run simple criminal histories like we can on defendants. So, if the lawyers ask a lot of questions it's partly due to us not learning much from the redacted questionnaire form; we only see info like occupation of the juror and spouse, marriage/kids, prior criminal convictions, prior lawsuits, prior traffic crashes, etc. It's the same info form for both criminal and civil cases, so even this limited information may be largely irrelevant to the particular case in court that day. Notorious southern California trials seem to take weeks to pick juries. I have never taken more than 3+ hours, even though I have to learn everything about the jurors from scratch in the courtroom.

Each case (criminal or civil) involves unique facts, and each side's lawyers have their own idea of what kinds of jurors are good or bad for that party's facts, theories, etc. We all bring 'prejudices' into a jury selection, too -- not improper racial prejudices but those "gut feelings" that jurors with certain jobs of personal experiences should not decide THIS case. Many times, the selection process fleshes out these issues.