Jury Research Panels

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Jurors can make or break a case for attorneys.

That’s why some lawyers hold jury research groups to understand how potential jurors react to cases.

These groups help legal experts decide which direction they should steer their cases.

Once a case heads through these doors and makes its way inside the courtroom, the fate of the accused, lands in the hands of the jurors.

A couple of Columbus attorneys, have been using jury research panels for the last five years, to understand what that fate might be in trials.

A jury research panel allows attorneys to get an inside look into what a jury room might sound like once deliberation starts.

The groups allow attorneys to see the way different pieces of evidence affect different people.

“Some jurors will think one direction. Other jurors will think other directions. We will give them a piece of evidence to consider and some of them will say martians came down and landed and put it there, and some of them will say that, you know, will get closer to what actually happened,” says Columbus trial attorney David Owen.

Say the study jurors are looking at evidence in a slip and fall case, Owen says he’ll pay attention to the experimental jurors’ emotions, what makes them tick, and their different viewpoints.

“A nine month pregnant lady falls in Newk’s on a slippery mat. Does that upset somebody? Does it not? How does that video look? Could there have been a better video? Etc. etc,” says Owen.

A random mix of people from the community are picked for the study groups.

“Typically, we do cases that are in other areas and they may do cases, other attorneys around the state, may do cases for us and that way, we never have concerns about our jury pool being tainted with people,” says Meadows Law Group Attorney, Amanda Meadows.

The research panels give lawyers an early sense on what kind of a jury they need in order to win their case.

“By the day you get to trial, you want to already know who you want on that jury and you want to know why you want them there, so that you have a clear mind going into that jury selection process for who you’re looking for, and what you think that’s going to resonate with them, and this is all designed to help in that,” says Meadows.

Owen says not every attorney does jury research panels, but say they help in a big way.