Jury Selection Tips From Jerry Giesler

I am always interested in other lawyers’ observations on jury selection. A criminal lawyer can always learn from others. Earlier this week I wrote about the great criminal lawyer Jerry Giesler. In regard to jury selection Giesler preferred jurors who were in sales or the entertainment field. He liked nice looking people who had a chance to have life smile upon them. He felt that jurors with good dispositions and an upbeat attitude made good jurors for the defense.

Giesler was always inclined to challenge jurors who were grouchy by disposition or had encountered hard luck or bitterness in their lives. He also avoided jurors whose professions called for finicky attention to detail or jurors who had led very narrow experiences in their lives.

Giesler believed schoolteachers were always good for the defense in a child molestation case because teachers know that their pupils will lie to merely for the sake of being dramatic or the to be the center of attention. He was very wary of putting single women on any type of sex case.

Gielsler also believed that a lawyer must never offend a juror. If you offend one juror, you maybe offending many other jurors on the panel who identify with the juror’s viewpoint. Giesler always believed in being courteous at all times in court. He believes absolute courtesy will do more to win a jury over to your side than anything else.

We can learn much from these old masters and a criminal lawyer is served well if he studies the techniques and ideas of other criminal lawyers.