Scientific Jury Selection - in Fiction

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.