Reading Comprehension

PT104 · S3 · P1 · Q7 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.

Of the following, the author's primary purpose in writing the passage most likely is to

search for compromise between proponents
Unrelated to Goal
Voir dire was just one of several potential solutions that the author presents but then undermines. The author's main agenda in writing this passage was to make the proposed solution she offers in the final two sentences of the passage, not to find a compromise between lovers and haters of voir dire.
4% picked this
call attention to the effects
Problem, not Solution
This answer makes it sound like the author wrote this passage just to publicize the Problem discussed in the 1st paragraph. But since the author ends with a Solution / Recommendation, then we have to consider that the primary reason why she wrote the passage. If she could only leave us with one sentence, it would be her solution/recommendation (found in the last couple sentences).
21% picked this
encourage judges to find new
Too Strong: ensure Wrong Solution
The author's solution doesn't have anything to do with judges doing new things. And it's very harsh to say that anything would ever ensure impartial jurors. The author's solution is more or less to stop considering the Problem a problem. She's saying, "Don't worry about the fact that many jurors will have some previous knowledge and even a previous opinion about a case. Trust that impartiality comes through the process of deliberation, not by each juror being a blank slate."
4% picked this
debate critics who find fault
Wrong Emphasis
Voir dire was just one of several potential solutions that the author presents but then undermines. The author's main agenda in writing this passage was to make the proposed Solution she offers in the final two sentences of the passage, not to debate critics how don't like voir dire. At no point is the author ever defending voir dire. She even seems to recognize the merit of the criticisms because she's saying, "some countries agree with these criticisms so much that they've abandoned using voir dire." The author is here to present a Solution, which this answer fails to capture.
4% picked this
Correct
argue for a change in
Why this is right
This sounds the most like "propose a Solution to the Problem of impartiality". The author has considered other people's attempts at solving the problem and then immediately presented ideas that undermine those solutions. In the end, she says that eliminating voir dire doesn't solve the impartiality problem. It just recognizes that voir dire ain't the solution. The solution, she says in the final two sentences, is to just redefine what we think "impartiality" means. Instead of trying to find jurors that are oblivious to the case they're going to be assigned to, courts can just think of an impartial jury as one that seems representative of the community's collective experience. If most people in the local community have already heard about the case and formed some opinions, then it's fine if most of the jurors have those characteristics too. That's because impartiality isn't about having 12 jurors who were a blank slate; it's the result of a process of deliberation between people.
Skill tested: Primary Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
67% picked this

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