Walter, to answer your question, I believe Maryland has the most restrictive voir dire in the country. A Howard County judge told me that although I think his basis for it was just what he had heard. We just get rough bios, they ask general questions with limited follow up, and then you make your picks. I exclude people that I have never even seen based on very limited bios.

But just because limiting jury strikes has been offer, there is clearly no groundswell for it. Is there a state in the country that offers no jury strikes? Has a full legislature even voted on the issue? I mean, I can find Internet debate on whether we should eliminate Tuesdays. But more to the point, the idea of jury eliminating jury strikes does not stem from the pandemic problem Gitcarver states: that doctors should be permitted on juries when doctors are on trial (or engineers or whatever). Do you really see this as a serious problem in our judicial system? Has anyone ever?

Sure Ron. Everyone in the world has only obtained a high school, GED or technical school diploma. There aren’t ever any professionals with college degrees. I guess once you get a college degree you are stricken from the potential jury pools.

Gitacarver, I have to tell you, you are the only person arguing that there should be no jury strikes.

Except that I am not arguing that Ron and you know it. I am saying the voir dire process has gotten away from its original intentions of seating a fair and impartial jury to one where the sides try and seat a jury that is impartial and more likely to vote for “their side” of the case.

But you proffer crazy ideas about which you know very little that are not being argued by people other than you and act like we are all crazy for not adopting your nonsense. You do this all of the time. I find it maddening.

I am sorry you find different points of view maddening Ron. I find it maddening that you constantly shift topics (as you have done here,) attack others for not being as superior as you are (as you have done here,) ascribe opinions to people which they have not said, and have a tendency to read what you believe what people are saying rather than what they are saying.

We won’t even get into to fact that you seem to just make stuff up out of the blue that is so incredibly implausible it stretches your credibility. (For example, you argued that you had never heard nor seen police that were corrupt despite the fact in the city in which you work over 40 cops had been recently indicted on top of the 20 or so that had been convicted and gone to jail.)

Now THAT’S maddening.

http://is.gd/3GDvrS

If memory serves, England some years back instituted reforms which moved a great portion of the distance toward the “take the first twelve out of the box, unless one of them is the defendant’s sister” end of the field. And also if memory serves, while practice varies widely from one state and locality in the U.S. to the next, much U.S. practice accords lawyers far, far more sway over jury selection than they get in other countries with jury systems. (I don’t know where Maryland stands on the spectrum between permissive and narrow use of voir dire/peremptories.)

Gitacarver, I have to tell you, you are the only person arguing that there should be no jury strikes. I mean, I have never seen anything and I can’t find anything. Have you? It there an article out there on the world wide web that supports this view? Is there a state in the country that does this?

On many of your rants, you might be right and the rest of the world might be wrong. It is possible, I guess. But you proffer crazy ideas about which you know very little that are not being argued by people other than you and act like we are all crazy for not adopting your nonsense. You do this all of the time. I find it maddening.

The fact that plaintiff attorneys feel its a good gamble of their money to file cases like this, PROVE the laws need to be changed.

It just does not apply to this issue.

Right. So when a doctor is on being sued, why are doctors eliminated from the jury? When an engineering issue is a part of the suit, why are engineers eliminated from the jury?

Contrary to your assertion, it is not that I want the “common man” eliminated from the jury. People like yourself do. A “jury of peers” was never intended to be culled down to where people are excluded from serving on a jury because of their professional expertise.

I don’t have a problem with the common man Ron.

You do.

I agree I want a doctor when I’m sick and a lawyer when I have a legal issue. It just does not apply to this issue.

Gitarcarver, does it bug you just a little that common many is allowed to vote? Just admit it. It is okay. Just a little. Right?

How do you suggest they do that, with no other defendants to name and the statute of limitations having run? This case will be an expensive loss for them. Every trial lawyer has cases that, in the end, were nothing but a huge waste of their time and money. Given that this is a product liability case, the plaintiff’s lawyers probably put in well over $100,000 of their own money out of pocket on the case for experts and the like.

You folks really do need to do some basic research on how lawsuits work. Lawyers don’t just file random papers against random people and collect money.

You should probably spend some time looking up how voir dire actually works. I have never “selected” a juror in my life. No state allows lawyers to “select” jurors. States allow, to varying degrees, lawyers to strike a couple (usually about 3) jurors of their choice. By and large, the jury isn’t selected by anyone, it’s “the next people in line who showed up for jury duty, minus a handful of people with obvious biases for or against a party.”