By District Attorney Ryan Sayers
2023 Vol. 10
Last week I stated that Clearfield County uses a three-part process for moving cases towards trial, and I explained the first two steps in that process.
This week I am going to explain the third part of that process, which is Jury Selection.
In Clearfield County, the Court Administrator sends out a notice and questionnaire to approximately 150 people to be at Jury Selection, and this is via a random draw from all registered voters in the county.
This total number creates the jury pool for that Jury Selection day.
At Jury Selection, the staff will draw around 40 people from the jury pool to be potential jurors on a specific case.
Once the potential jurors are seated, the judge, prosecutor, defendant and defense attorney (if there is one), will be present and the voir dire will begin.
Voir dire is a legal term that means questioning of jurors by the judge and attorneys. The whole purpose of this process is to make sure that there is a fair and impartial jury that will listen to everything at trial and render a true verdict without any bias towards the Commonwealth or the defendant.
The judge usually begins this process by asking the jurors the following questions: Are you available on the date(s) of trial? Do know the prosecutor, defendant, and/or the defense attorney? Do you know anything about this case from the community or news?
At that point, the judge turns to the prosecutor to ask questions, and once he/she is done, then the defense attorney or defendant gets to ask questions of the panel.
If any of the questions result in an answer that leads the attorneys or judge to believe that the person has a bias that cannot be resolved or has a conflict, then that juror is excused from that panel and a new juror takes that place.
Once both sides are done questioning the jury panel, then the Commonwealth and the defense alternate striking jurors from the panel until there are 12 jurors and two alternates remaining.
These strikes are typically based on answers given during questioning but did not result in being excused or based on the questionnaire that was filled-out ahead of jury selection day.
After the strikes are completed, the judge will address the jury and alternates by explaining that they are not to look at any news or discuss this case with anyone and that they are only to base their decision on the testimony and evidence presented during trial, which can be a couple weeks or a couple months in the future.
Now that we have gone through Criminal Call, Criminal Pre-Trial and Jury Selection, next week we will start discussing the parts of a criminal trial.
Ryan Sayers is the elected District Attorney of Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.
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