Description
Managing high profile cases can be stressful, this course will help you to manage these cases with knowledge of venue changes, the impact of pretrial publicity on juror and jurydecision making, and ruling deferment.There is more than 40 years of research documenting the pernicious effects of pretrial publicity on juror decision making. The research demonstrates that constitutional rights to a fair and impartial trial can be undermined when a jury pool has been saturated with prejudicial media coverage. However, the most recent decisions on change of venue appear to disregard that risk. Since skilling, it has become increasingly difficult to win a change of venue motion. Many judges prefer to punt the issue and wait until after jury selection begins. Voir dire then becomes an exercise in persuading prospective jurors to say the magic words, I can be fair and impartial. This effectively provides legal cover against an appeal, but leaves the petitioner with a box filled with biased jurors. To navigate a change of venue motion in this environment it is imperative to understand the case law, social science research, and strategies for demonstrating substantial bias in the jury pool before voir dire begins. This information covers the federal case law on venue and uses recent high profile cases and change of venue survey data to chronicle the steps involved in putting together a successful motion describes the social science literature on the impact of pretrial publicity and explains the arguments for why the trial court should not wait until jury selection begins to make a ruling and describes alternative remedies to a change of venue and how the motion can be leveraged for improved voir dire conditions including additional peremptory challenges, an extensive juror questionnaire, individual sequestered voir dire, and a lowered cause challenge standard.
Date: 2019-05-15 Start Time: End Time:
Learning Objectives