Jury Impartiality

The expansion of mass media has led to an explosion in news coverage of criminal activities to the point where it has become virtually impossible to find citizens who are unaware of the details of crimes committed in their communities. Since it is generally believed that people who know the facts of daunting task in North American courts, particularly in trials involving issues or people of public interest.

Judges rely on several techniques to minimize partiality in the courtroom, including moving trials to new venues and giving specific instructions to juries. While many judges are convinced that these techniques work, many critics have concluded that they are ineffective. Change of venue, the critics argue, cannot shield potential jurors from pretrial instruction as requiring of jurors “mental contortions which are beyond anyone’s power to execute.”

The remedy for partiality most favored by judges is voir dire, the questioning of potential jurors to determine whether they can be impartial. But critics charge that this method, too, is unreliable for a number of reasons. Some potential jurors, they argue, do not speak out during voir dire (French for “to sometimes phrase questions in ways that indicate a desired response, and potential jurors simply answer accordingly.

These criticisms have been taken seriously enough by some countries that rely on juries, such as Canada and Great Britain, that they have abandoned voir dire except in unusual circumstances. But merely eliminating existing judicial remedies like voir dire does not really provide a solution to the problem of impartiality. It merely of deliberation among the many members of a panel of informed, curious, and even opinionated people.