Thanks. I've never been on a jury so I'm totally unaware of the selection process. It seems less unfair that both sides get to excuse jurors; still, on average, it seems it would drastically skew the pool of jurors away from a random sample of the general populace.
> still, on average, it seems it would drastically skew the pool of jurors away from a random sample of the general populace.
A jury pool has never been meant to represent a random sample of the general populace.
Indeed that would be enormously counterproductive: in, say, a Klan dominated county we might expect a random sample of the county populace to turn up 9 racists in a sample of 12, but that is not a jury makeup likely to result in a fair verdict for a black defendant.
All of these questioning and dismissal mechanisms exist to make sure that the jury pool is absolutely NOT 12 random people, but is instead as close to a collection of 12 people who are believed to be able to return an impartial verdict as can be reasonably managed in the opinion of the court, by balancing the concerns of both prosecution and defence council.
