Jury Selection

Jury selection, called voir dire, is probably the most important part of any Missouri personal injury jury trial. Jury selection is the part of the trial where you pick your jury from a panel of prospective jurors. In Missouri, the panel consists of citizens of the county in which your case is being tried. A jury coordinator will send out jury duty summons to people whose names have been randomly drawn from registered voting rolls and other civic databases. These people will then show up for jury duty on a given day. A judge will make sure they are qualified to serve on a jury and then pick 35 to as many as 300 or more to serve on a panel, depending on the size of the case. From those people, a jury of 12 people plus a few alternates will be chosen.

The primary goal of jury selection in any personal injury case is not to choose who you want to serve on your jury, but to dismiss those who you do not want to serve. Any number jurors can be stricken for cause by the judge, but only a few, usually 3 per side, can be stricken by the parties. It is important, therefore, to delve deeply into jurors' attitudes and beliefs about a variety of topics in order to determine if they biased enough to be stricken for cause. If a juror demonstrates a belief or a strong feeling that would prohibit him or her from following the law in the case, then he or she must be stricken for cause.

Because of the importance of jury selection, entire books and classes are taught on the subject. It takes years or practice, study and experience to master the process. As a Kansas City personal injury attorney, I have tried numerous jury trials, studied and applied the latest techniques of voir dire, and am continuously honing the craft. If your personal injury case is one of the few that can't settle before trial, with the Meyerkord Law Firm of Kansas City, you can rest assured you will have the best jury trial. Contact the firm today.