« Law Firms Learning How to Deal With the Gossip Mill |
Main
| New Life for Notorious Nanny Turned Lawyer »
Is There a Right to a Jury Consultant?
One Boston reporter calls it the Neil Entwistle circus. It is the trial getting underway with jury selection this week of the 29-year-old British native accused of murdering his 27-year-old wife and their 9-month-old daughter. The horror of the crime and the defendant's U.K. roots have brought an international media gallery to Middlesex County Superior Court in Woburn, Mass., a city previously known in international legal lore as the setting for the toxic waste dump in the book and movie, A Civil Action. At least one Bay State paper has set up an entire Web site devoted to the Entwistle trial, complete with a trial blog.
As the first day of jury selection wrapped up Monday, defense lawyer Elliot Weinstein broke his long media silence about the case to bash presiding Judge Diane M. Kottmyer's method of questioning jurors, asserting that she is not properly screening for bias. Several months ago, Weinstein had asked the court to pay for a jury consultant to help in phrasing questions for potential jurors. She denied the request.
Kottmyer's rationale, according to Massachusetts jury consultant and lawyer Edward P. Schwartz on his The Jury Box Blog, was that it had never been done before, so it need not be done here. But why not? he asks. "Massachusetts has one of the most liberal statutes with respect to the availability of public funds with which indigent defendants can hire experts. The language of the statute reflects the basic premise that if a paying defendant would reasonably hire such an expert, the indigent defendant should be able to, as well." He continues:
Judge Kottmyer's mindset is a relic of a time when we didn't actually know anything about jury behavior. She believes that the best way to learn if a potential juror might be biased is to ask her, 'Will you be biased?' Research into the effects of pretrial publicity show that those would-be jurors who admit to having been exposed to pre-trial publicity, but assert that they can be fair nonetheless, are actually MORE LIKELY to be biased against the defendant than those who admitted that they might have trouble being completely objective.
By refusing to appoint a jury consultant and through her other rulings related to voir dire and venue, Schwartz concludes, "Judge Kottmyer has pretty much guaranteed that Mr. Entwistle will not receive a fair trial." Are Weinstein and Schwartz right here? Have jury consultants become so essential that a defendant's right to a fair trial hinges on having one provided?
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 4, 2008 at 09:45 AM | Permalink
| Comments (1)