When you are called in for jury service you will meet at the courthouse in a jury assembly room. Some potential jurors may be excused for the day if a case is settled out of court just before trial; other jurors may be assigned to a trial and will proceed forward with the selection process.
During jury selection the judge will briefly describe the case, introducing the parties to the case and their respective attorneys. The judge, and sometimes the attorneys for each party, will ask questions to determine if potential jurors have any personal interest in the case or have any preexisting biases that could influence their judgement. These questions may relate to a potential juror’s educational and employment background, what experiences they may have had in a lawsuit or as the victim of a crime, and what their opinions and beliefs are pertaining to relevant elements of the trial they will hear.
Attorneys for each party may ask that a potential juror be removed from the jury pool based on their responses through a “peremptory challenge” or a “challenge for cause.”
Challenges for cause are made on the basis that a juror’s impartiality may be compromised in some way, such as if the potential juror had recently been the victim of a crime similar to the alleged offense in the case they would be examining. The judge will decide whether to grant an attorney’s challenge for cause, and there is not a limit on the number of these challenges that may be made.
A limited number of peremptory challenges are also available to each party, but these challenges do not require the judge’s approval or a reason to be given for why an attorney would like someone removed from the jury pool.
Jurors who have been challenged will be dismissed from jury service for that trial and the selected jurors will be sworn in.