Persuading a Venire Panel with In-Group Identification
How to win friends and influence people on your jury.
“Mr. Jones,” I asked, making solid eye contact with the middle-aged gentleman in the front row of my venire panel. “Let’s say you’re having a solid Saturday afternoon at your house, when there’s a knock on your door. It’s two Midland Police Department detectives, and they want to know where you were this very day fifteen years ago, because Mr. Haygood has filed a report stating you beat him up in the mall bathroom.”
“OK,” he replied, shifting in his seat.
“How do you defend yourself from that claim?”
I thought for sure I would draw an objection from the prosecutor, but I did not. Mr. Jones continued his nervous shuffle.
“Gosh, I don’t know,” he said, finally.
“Think they should have some video? Maybe an eyewitness? Fingerprints? Maybe my medical records from when I went to the hospital with some bruises and cuts?”
“Oh for sure, for sure,” said Mr. Jones.
Then I shifted gears. “Mr. Jones, what does ‘reasonable doubt’ look like to you?”
But he picked up on my tactic. “Oh, if there’s not enough evidence for me to be sure that I was doing the right thing.”
“Very good, Mr. Jones. Who here disagrees with Mr. Jones?”
And so on and so forth. I went through several similar examples with other jurors in an attempt to show the venire panel that they already possessed the reasoning skills necessary to question the version of events put forward by the State; what I had to do was persuade them without facts and without mentioning the evidence they were likely to hear or not hear in my case. I in essence had to make them my confidants before they were my jurors.