I selected over a hundred live juries

and now I’ve selected four virtual

juries let me show you the difference

this is a zoom call with over 104

participants even when you narrow it

down to this shot of potential jurors

all you see is little faces and little

boxes and sometimes you don’t even see

their faces and you don’t know what

they’re doing unless for example this

juror who’s in for Dyer is working at

the auto repair shop or even when you’re

in trial this juror is watching the

trial from his car on his phone

virtual jury selection is not a one-man

job

one set of eyes cannot watch all the

potential jurors on a screen or even

those who are not on the screen at the

same time you need multiple people

trained in jury selection to watch the

jurors and while you’re doing vordia in

other words asking the questions of the

jurors you can really only focus on one

potential juror at a time so you can’t

ask traditional questions to a group of

jurors for example you ask one juror if

they have any negative feelings about

corporations and the expression opinion

and then you can ask the rest of the

people in a live box did you hear what

Mrs X said does anybody else have

opinions like that in Virtual jury

selection that simply doesn’t work

rules are what’s missing from virtual

jury selection in other words court

rules that were designed to create a

formal atmosphere and force attention

concentration and honesty are lacking

people who are left on their own devices

in other words their computer and other

things don’t focus in the same way they

don’t take it as seriously and often

they don’t abide by the rules in other

words they’re shopping on eBay or

they’re taking care of their dog or

they’re answering the door they’re not

fully committed to the process

it’s difficult to focus a virtual jury’s

attention unless you’re interacting

one-on-one with them so you have a

limited period of time to interact and

make a decision as to whether this

individual juror is good or bad once

you’re done with the examination and

you’re on to somebody else you can’t

focus on the previous juror or the next

juror you’re limited to really dealing

with one person at a time

if you’ve never done virtual jury

selection in the past you have to think

about all the things frankly that can go

wrong and have multiple people with you

at the same point in time

it’s a dividing conquer process people

have to watch those potential jurors who

are not visible on your screen they need

to figure out who’s paying attention

who’s not paying attention and social

research and jury questionnaires become

more important because you have less

physical time with each potential juror

it’s hard to say what’s the weirdest

thing that’s happened but I can give you

some examples one potential juror was

clearly in her car during jury selection

but she was driving while she was in her

car it turned out that she lost the zoom

link so she drove to the Juror

Commissioner physical office and missed

the beginning of War Dyer she acquired

the zoom link and then she got on zoom

on her phone and drove from the juror

Commissioner’s Office back to her home

to 10 jury selection hopefully she

wasn’t completely concentrating on jury

selection while she was driving

regardless she wasn’t fully engaged in

the process other examples would include

people working out on elliptical

machines

people asleep people cooking in their

kitchen

people answering the door to receive

packages from Amazon and all other

things you could possibly imagine other

than concentrating on jury selection