I have heard lots of experts tell me their opinion as to what are the goals of jury selection. Here is my view of the essential tasks of jury selection:
- You identify a potential juror’s world views on the relevant issues; and
- You attempt to eliminate those jurors that hold world views that will not permit them to believe your story.
Put another way, you want to categorize jurors into those who are persuadable and not persuadable. Then you attempt to eliminate as many of the not persuadable group as possible. While there are many other goals of jury selection, none of them are more important than these two.