nd people, questioning them about their beliefs and attitudes toward such issues as religion, education, books and magazines, government, and war resistance. Once the interviews were complete, his team developed a framework for ranking each potential juror on a scale of one to five. That method is still widely used today. It enables jury selectors to pick jurors for exclusion during voir dire for cause or by means of peremptory strikes. One of Schulman's "most important and counter-intuitive findings was that in Harrisburg, college-educated people tended to be conservative and hence poor defense jurors" (Barber 6).
Schulman and the defense team successfully chose a cluster of young women who formed a defense-sympathetic faction. The cluster arrived at a more lenient view of the defendants than did other members of the jury. Further, they supported one another during jury deliberations. As a result, the trial ended with a hung jury for the most serious charges.
Trial consultants offer many services to their clients: case analysis, trial simulations, evaluation of opening and closing statements, witness evaluation and preparation, preparation of voir dire questioning, jury-selection assistance, settlement evaluation, posttrial interviews, change-of-venue evaluation, jury-composition challenges, community-attitude surveys, and courtroom graphics. Once a jury pool has been selected, the process of voir dire begins. That gives the lawyers on either side of the case the opportunity to select jurors who the consultants believe will view the case most objectively. For example, in a civil case the goal of the defendants' attorneys would be to protect their clients' rights under the Seventh Amendment and provide them with an impartial jury. Ultimately, all of the advocates try to select a jury that will view their respective cases as sympathetically as possible, in the hope that their client will prevail.
Through a series of questions th...