Reading Comprehension

PT104 · S3 · P1 · Q6 Jury Impartiality

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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.

Topic

The challenges of ensuring impartial juries in the age of mass media coverage of crime.

Framework

Problem / Solution

Main Point

Because mass media makes it nearly impossible for jurors to be totally ignorant of criminal cases, traditional methods for ensuring impartiality—like voir dire, change of venue, and judge’s instructions—are often ineffective; true impartiality comes from the collective deliberation of a diverse and informed jury, not from isolating each individual juror from information and opinion. The Most Valuable Sentence appears in the last paragraph:

P1: The Complication of Empaneling Impartial Juries in the Media Age

The huge increase in crime coverage by mass media means everyone knows details about criminal cases, making it really hard to find jurors who can be unbiased or truly impartial, especially in high-profile cases.

P2: Traditional Judicial Remedies and Their Critics

Judges use strategies like moving trials or giving strict instructions to the jury to reduce bias, but critics say these don’t actually work—people can’t really ignore what they already know, especially for well-publicized cases.

P3: Problems with Voir Dire (Jury Questioning)

The main method judges rely on is questioning jurors during jury selection to weed out bias, but critics point out a lot of flaws: some people hide their true feelings, some lie to avoid serving, some aren’t honest about what they know, and sometimes judges unintentionally lead people to a desired answer.

Which one of the following principles is most in keeping with the passage's argument?

Jurors should put aside their
Opposite, if anything
The author never says that jurors should put aside their personal experiences. She thinks that impartiality results from a process of deliberation among the "many members of a panel of informed, curious, and even opinionated people". The notion of being informed and opinionated goes hand in hand with drawing upon personal experience from outside the courtroom.
6% picked this
Correct
Jurors should rely on their
Why this is right
This is the flip of (C), and this one aligns with the author's stance in the final paragraph. If a jury is to be truly impartial, it must be composed of informed citizens representative of the community's collective experience; today, this experience includes exposure to mass media The author thinks it's okay for jurors to be opinionated people who have heard pretrial stuff about the case; this is what makes them representative of the community's collective experience, and impartiality results from the process of twelve such people deliberating together.
Skill tested: Principle · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
82% picked this
Jurors should make every effort
Opposite, if anything
The author is NOT part of the crowd of people who are determined to find oblivious jurors or to force jurors to ignore information learned outside the classroom, which is described as "mental contortions which are beyond anyone's power to execute". The author is okay with jurors being opinionated people. She thinks that impartiality isn't found in the mind of each juror but rather in the process of 12 representative citizens collaborating and deliberating on a verdict.
5% picked this
Jurors should be selected to
Too Strong: based on their degree
The author would not say, "We should pick jurors based on who has the least exposure to mass-media coverage before the trial". After all, she says this about impartial juries: If a jury is to be truly impartial, it must be composed of informed citizens representative of the community's collective experience; today, this experience includes exposure to mass media But she also wouldn't say that "We should pick jurors based on who has the MOST exposure to mass-media coverage". She isn't saying that mass-media exposure is the way we decide who makes the jury. She's just saying that mass-media exposure shouldn't be a dealbreaker that keeps somebody off a jury.
6% picked this
Jurors should be selected to
Too Strong
Too Strong: based on capacity to refrain This again sounds like the people who worry about jurors being blank slates with no previous knowledge of a trial. The author isn't part of that crowd. She's cool with jurors having exposure to mass-media coverage prior to the trial. This answer, though, is talking about whether jurors should be gaining even more mass-media exposure to the trial while it's in progress. Our author never expresses any specific view about mass-media exposure during the trial, but we have no basis for supporting this strongly worded answer that, "Jurors should be selected based on this criterion: how capable they are of refraining from being exposed to mass-media coverage of the case while the trial is in progress".
1% picked this

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