Quote:
Originally Posted by Voidwar  I was thinking the other day about our Bill of Rights, and how often how much of it is ignored or no longer in effect.
In my view, almost all of the first ten amendments are being violated by our government.
So this got me thinking about it, and reviewing the Bill of Rights for current compliance.
...
So, thanks if you read this far, and here comes my point . . .
Voir dire, is a direct violation of the 6th amendment, because it allows partiality where impartiality was decreed.
If a potential juror has a bias, I have a right to that bias sitting in my jury box.
If a potential juror worked a job that had to do with the case, I have a right to his knowledge of the industry being present on the jury.
To put it bluntly, I have a right to the first twelve citizen's off the voter rolls, and neither side's lawyers have any right to eliminate them.
The jury system is there to protect the citizen from the government.
Why then would we dilute this protection and give such power to lawyers ??
When they hand pick juries, the citizen ends up needing protection from them and their undue influence.
My contention is that the 6th amendment prohibits the process of Voir dire, because of the word "impartial". |
Voire dire is done to determine whether a jury is impartial.
If a person has bias (for or against you), he or she is by definition not impartial and can be removed from the panel by you or your opponent. This is called removal "for cause" and such removals should be approved by the judge.
The fact that a person worked a job that had to do with the case does not necessarily mean he is impartial.
In addition to "for cause" removals, each side has an equivalent amount of peremptory challenges (usually 3 each), that (with certain limited restrictions) can be used for any reason. Why do we allow these? It's a compromise. In certain situations, a party may just have a feeling a juror is biased, without any specific articulable reason, and in other cases the lawyer may not want to disclose why a juror is unacceptable for issues having to do with case strategy.
The purpose of all this is to try to ensure a jury that is in fact an impartial panel. The first 12 at random may sound good, but if the first 12 included 7 that were related to your opponent, you might not think that was so great a system.