Jury selection: Break those eggshells

You’re picking a jury.

Your client is accused of unspeakable acts involving his 2 daughters – ages 10 and 12.

Needless to say, the reading of the charges themselves makes the entire courtroom cringe – including your jury venire.

You know what your defense is: it didn’t happen. The girls are lying. They made contradictory statements. Internally and externally contradictory. Their mother – your client’s ex-wife – is vigorously fighting for sole custody. The allegations came to light only after she had spent a solid month with their daughters on an out-of-state vacation. Your client broke a promise … for the 3rd time … to take the girls to a Taylor Swift concert.

You know what you have to do: you need to directly confront and challenge both girls’ testimony.

Stop worrying about how you’ll look in voir dire. Stop worrying about breaking some eggshells and instead explain to the jury exactly what you’re going to have to do and why.

Too many lawyers fear this moment and pull their punches.

You need to see it as 1) an opportunity to create credibility, 2) an opportunity to educate, and 3) an opportunity to persuade.

The beauty of voir dire? You get to educate, explain, and argue as long as there is a question at the end of it. Don’t miss the opportunity.

Acknowledge the horror of the accusations.

Acknowledge the trauma for the girls.

Acknowledge if the client has not been father-of-the-year.

These things build credibility.

Draw out the emotional venire members who can only see the charges.

This can set you up to make extra challenges for cause.

Then educate and persuade:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a solemn obligation to vigorously represent my client. We contend that what he is charged with simply didn’t happen – that the evidence is based almost entirely on the inconsistent and erratic statements of his disappointed daughters, who were put up to lying about their father by a mother who desperately wants sole custody.

It will be part of my job to challenge the girls’ testimony. I may have to treat them sternly. I will have to expose their inconsistencies. Their biases. Their motivations. I don’t apologize for vigorously defending an innocent man, but my questioning may create a visceral reaction for some of you based on the nature of the charges alone.

Does everyone understand why I will have to do that?

Would any of you tend to want to hold it against my client when I do it?

Does anyone tend to assume that girls of my client’s daughters’ ages would not lie about such a thing?

Does everyone agree with me that children and adolescents lie too – even about serious matters such as these?”

If you dance around these matters, you won’t have the best jury possible for your case.

If you refuse to go much beyond, “can you all agree to be fair to my client?” because you’re afraid of how it will make you look and you don’t want to ruffle feathers or upset anyone -- you haven’t done your job.

Go ahead; stomp on those eggshells.