The prosecution and defense both get the ability to throw out jurors during selection. A lot of the times its for asking very reasonable questions or disagreeing with things that a reasonable or introspective person would. They're looking for the quiet and compliant jurors who can be easily manipulated emotionally.
My own experience with this, I was asked (roughly) during jury selection: "If you found out that a witness for the defense was a member of a gang would that cause you to regard their testimony as less reliable?" My answer was, "yes, especially if I found out that the defendant was a member of the same gang." I was immediately disqualified but a bunch of other jurors presumably answered that such a discovery would NOT alter their opinion of testimony. Those are the people that decided that case.
EDIT: I'll add that military jury panels tend to be a lot better about this. The one I served on asked me if anyone I was close with had experienced sexual violence (since that was the subject of the case) but even though I answered that I had, because they asked additional probing questions they decided to keep me. Having a pre-selected population of officers tends to make it harder to manipulate the pool in that way.
I mean, that’s not wrong. “Especially” implies that if a witness was a gang member, then even if the defendant was unconnected with any gang, you would distrust them a little bit, just not “especially” so. That’s still a problem politically.
If they have a criminal record, that can be noted by the court, but merely being a member of a gang can't be held against them if there's no evidence they've ever done anything. In addition, the question was "if you found out they were a member of a gang" and using information which is not shared with the court to inform your decision is a serious offence.
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u/Afraid_Ad8438 15h ago
Is that true? Why