In Fiction
The major fictional representations to date have largely portrayed jury consultants as villains that are highly effective at influencing the jury, often using illegal tactics that mainstream practitioners do not use. Consultants are major characters in John Grisham's novel The Runaway Jury and the similar film adaptation. In the film, Rankin Fitch, "jury consultant for the defense," leads a team that uses high technology and sometimes-illegal tactics to prevent a judgment against their corporate client in what Salon calls "our worst nightmare of corporate arm-twisting." Writing about the book, Kressel and Kressel say Grisham "plays on fears that the American justice system has been hijacked by crafty attorneys and immensely effective hired-gun social scientists." Jean Hanff Korelitz's A Jury of Her Peers stretches the known reality of consulting much further. Korelitz's fictional consultants are part of an unscrupulous firm that charges prosecutors to kidnap homeless people, program them with drugs into conviction-only jurors, and substitute them for those hoping to avoid jury duty. Jonakait says the novel is "hardly realistic" but "reveals the distrust engendered by jury consultants."
In a fifth-season episode of the CBS television series Numb3rs, entitled "Guilt Trip," an illegal arms dealer (James Marsters) is tried for racketeering and the murder of the key witness against him. After he is unexpectedly acquitted, the investigation reveals that he had hired a sleazy jury consultant to not only identify those jurors who would most likely sway the rest of the jury's deliberations, so as to bribe and extort them into pushing for acquittal, but also train one of his henchmen to pose as the perfect "prosecutor's juror" and get placed on the jury. In season one, episode eleven, of the television series Leverage, a pharmaceutical company is under fire for a wrongful death case involving a stimulative all natural herbal supplement. In an attempt to prevent major losses for the pharmaceutical company in question, and to protect the investment of a soon to be parent company's subsidiary, scientific jury selection is used. However, the Leverage team thwarts their efforts every step of the way similar to a giant chess match.
Read more about this topic: Scientific Jury Selection
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)