Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Someone want to explain that from a legal perspective?
I assume both the defense and prosecution were able to exclude jury members for various reasons, and then they had 18 left?
|
You would exclude jurors at the beginning before the trial starts. Both sides would typically be allowed to choose a certain number of jurors to exclude from the initial large pool. Many jurors can exclude themselves too, for various reasons.
Then you have your 20 jurors who hear the case. Then it gets whittled down, apparently via lottery system, to the final 12 that decide the case. That's a lot of randomness to insert into the system IMO. At the start of the trial both sides have a say in who is on the jury. Then the lottery system could randomly result in a jury made up of almost all jurors favorable to one side.