Voir Dire: The Sword in the Stone

I am just returned from staffing a 4-day Trial Lawyers College Regional Seminar on voir dire in Chappaqua, New York and ---as with all such forays into the TLC method--- I return knowing precious things.

There is a secret to the mystical growth process through which a jury is assimilated. Hiding always in plain sight, the secret is like a mighty sword impaled in a dense stone -- available to all but only the bravest can extract the righteous, ringing blade. I again discovered the secret this past weekend and, as I march away from the memory of that Regional, I wonder if the secret will stay with me this time. Or, will it retreat quietly from my consciousness just as the detail of a vivid dream disappears when day replaces night?

Voir Dire dances amid such dangerous dagger points as race and prejudice, money and greed, judgment and punishment – all coupled with elemental, societal fears of “The Other.” The simple, precious truth is that the entire process begins long before the venire files into the box. Curiously, it starts even before a trial date is selected and even before the event occurs which triggers the need for the jury’s presence. Even before the basest crime, even before a party’s negligence and well before any accident or injury….voir dire is beginning. The mystical process starts before one has received a law degree – before college even.

Who can say when it actually commences?

But, even if the “when” is hard to pinpoint, the “what” and “who” are not. We always know the scary issue in our cases – the thing that wakes us up at 3 in the morning, our hearts hammering. And, if we can be honest, we know the “who” is US. Voir dire begins within each of US first. It coalesced within us the first time we became aware that we were “better” than some and could therefore refers to others by a variety of handy racial epithets which became so much a part of us that they could be trotted out in anger or as a perverse joke. On the other hand, a part of our own voir dire undoubtedly bloomed like lake algae in a smothering "dead zone" the first time we became a derided target of hurtful, ignorant prejudice or jaded bigotry. Or, surely some of it started the first time we became aware that we could lie to obtain advantage or that it was OK to do almost anything ---surrender any aspect of ethics or character--- for money. Having been physically or emotionally hit while still children, we learned to strike back in camouflaged and visceral ways. We learned somewhere early on that there were parts of us which society could not accept and so we repressed that vital part of our soul and denigrated all others who exhibited any sign of what we hid within our own weeping heart.

We acted out and breathed truth into the words of Carl Jung: Fanaticism is the brother of doubt.

During our travels through time we also learned:

Men Don’t Cry.

Women Are Weak.

What Those Goddam People Need To Do Is Quit Livin’ On Welfare And Get A Goddam Job.

We learned many such “truths” that effortlessly immersed themselves within us like parasitic worms.

As I flew home to Baton Rouge, I reflected on all we had experienced in Chappaqua and what would evermore be required of me in order to conduct a Voir Dire. I must first be honest about all that is within me ---assuming I can develop the discernment to sense or see it--- and be thereafter willing to "own it." Before I engage my potential jurors, I first must be willing to stand before them and share what I truly "own," speaking forthrightly about what is deep within me and mirroring the fear I have about the dagger points in my case.

Then and only then can I ask them to share their own heart secrets. Through such exchanges of elemental truth, our tribe is formed.

This is what we spent 4 days learning in Chappaqua. The learning is simple but the task is incredibly hard to do. And, since we have been taught to tightly hold our secrets deep within us, the open sharing of those secrets with others is counterintuitive – especially in an open courtroom before a jury box filled with people who will shortly judge every utterance and nuance of our case.

And yet……we must.

This is why only the bravest warriors can pull the sword from the stone.

--- J.R.