Describe the voir dire process. What are the legal system's goals for voir dire?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.Once the panel of prospective jurors is assembled and summoned to the courthouse, selection issues change. The focus shifts from concerns about the representativeness of prospective jurors to questions about a given juror's ability and willingness to be fair and impartial.As part of the constitutional right to be tried by an "impartial" jury, a defendant is afforded the opportunity to screen prospective jurors to determine whether any of them are prejudiced. The forum in which the judge and/or the attorneys question prospective jurors is called voir dire, a French term that literally means "to see, to say." Voir dire is conducted in a variety of ways, depending on a jurisdiction's rules and a judge's preferences. Who asks the questions, what questions are asked and how they are phrased, how long the questioning goes on, and whether the questions are posed to individual jurors or to a group are all matters left to judges' discretion.The most limited form of voir dire involves a small number of questions asked in yes-or-no format only by the judge and features group rather than individual questioning of prospective jurors. An example: "Do any of you have an opinion at this time as to the defendant's guilt or innocence?" Yes-or-no questions are effective in controlling the answers of witnesses and reducing the time spent in voir dire, but they offer little insight into jurors' beliefs and attitudes. Also note that this form of questioning requires jurors to self-identify any biases and report them to the judge. But implicit biases-beliefs borne of experiences and attitudes that predispose us to think in a certain way and of which we are unaware-make it difficult for jurors to accurately know their own predilections.