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Jury selection is like putting a penny in a gum-ball machine; you have no idea what you are going to get.

At least that is the contention of retired Circuit Court Judge Casey Stengel, of Moline, Ill.

The worlds attention has been focused on the jury selection taking place in the Minneapolis courtroom where Derek Chauvin, a former police officer, is accused of murder in the death of George Floyd. Of course, lawyers do everything they can to eliminate the randomness by trying to pick jurors who they think will vote their way.

I have covered enough jury selections over the years to have become a bit cynical about the process. For one thing, courts are looking for people who havent already formed an opinion on whether someone is guilty or innocent. But who on planet Earth hasnt already watched that video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyds neck and formed an opinion?

When I first started covering trials, I was working as a reporter in Galveston, Texas. An old judge named Ed Harris took me under his wing and explained how courts really work. Harris had served in the Texas Legislature for decades before being elected a judge. One observation he made that seems to hold true is that the smartest person in the jury pool never gets picked.

Daniel Fultz, a criminal defense attorney for Brown, Hay and Stephens in Springfield, Ill., explained it this way, Lets say you have a mostly blue-collar jury and the towns doctor somehow gets on, too. You can just about bet hell be elected foreman, and hell lead the other jurors to a verdict. If one person is going to choose the verdict, you might as well have the judge decide.

During my time in Texas, I got to know a young defense attorney named Robert Hirschhorn. He has gone on to be one of the top jury consultants in the nation. He picked the juries that acquitted William Kennedy Smith, Robert Durst and George Zimmerman. The jury selection strategy in the George Floyd case would be much different than in most trials.

Everythings reversed, Hirschhorn said. In a typical criminal case, the defendant is looking for more liberal jurors. And the prosecution is looking for pro-law enforcement types. But when you have a cop on trial, especially in a high-profile case, everything gets flipped around. That means that the defense is looking for as many White, law enforcement-oriented, conservative jurors, that they can find and they dont want a liberal anywhere near this case. The prosecution wants as many Black jurors as they can get and as many liberal or moderates as they can get.

So what question should a lawyer ask to determine an ideal juror in this case?

Id ask of the last four presidents Trump, Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton who did you like the best? Jurors who say Obama or Clinton are who the prosecution wants and those who say Trump are the ideal for the defense in a cop case, Hirschhorn said.

Jurors arent always as well-informed as one might expect them to be. When I was a young reporter, I had written a story on a murder case where the defendant was being retried after his first trial ended in a mistrial. It seems a witness was a bit too honest in the first trial. A prosecutor asked why he was frightened of the defendant and the man said, Because he has killed before. It was a truthful answer, but not something the judge wanted jurors to hear. Thus, a mistrial occurred.

The day jury selection was to begin in the second trial, a story I had written appeared on the front page explaining why the man was being retried for murder. The judge on the case worried that his jury pool had been contaminated. So, each potential juror was brought into the courtroom alone and questioned about what they remembered reading in the newspaper that morning. One older woman sat primly on the witness stand and was grilled by the lawyers. The interrogation by the defense lawyer went like this:

Maam, did you read the Galveston Daily News this morning?

Did you read a story about a jury being selected for a murder trial?

Well, yes but I only read the first sentence of the story.

At this point the defense attorney nearly snarled, You knew you were being called today for jury service in a murder trial and you saw a story on the front page of the newspaper about jury selection for a murder trial and you expect us to believe you only read the first sentence of the article? How can that be, maam?

The woman shifted uncomfortably on the witness stand and explained: I got to the courthouse early and saw the newspaper machine out front. I started to read the story through the little window in the machine, but I didnt have a quarter to buy the paper.

Reeder is a veteran statehouse journalist in Illinois and a freelance writer.

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