Maryland Criminal & Immigration Lawyer Blog
A criminal trial in Maryland is always a monumentally stressful situation, as your freedom often is on the line. One way to ensure you receive justice is to maximize the fairness of your trial, and one way to do that is through juror selection. Effectively executing the juror selection process helps ensure that the jury that decides your fate is impartial. Juror selection is one of the many settings — before, during, and after trial — where having a skilled Maryland criminal defense lawyer is vitally important.
A common problem accused people and defense attorneys face is the tendency among some prospective jurors to associate witnesses for the state (like police officers and experts testifying for the prosecution) with integrity and credibility and connect witnesses for the defense with untrustworthiness. Identifying and excluding those potential jurors is crucial to a fair trial and a successful defense.
That element of juror selection was central to a recent felony case from Baltimore. The defendant, R.A., was on trial for shooting a man during a June 2022 party at the city’s Inner Harbor. The state put him on trial for the shooting in 2023.
The accused man did not deny shooting the alleged victim, but asserted that he acted in self-defense. The jury eventually found the man guilty and sentenced him to 15 years without the possibility of parole (plus another 25 years suspended) and three years of supervised probation.
Earlier this month, the man secured a new trial and a reversal of his conviction.
Before any criminal trial starts, the court goes through the voir dire process, where the judge or the lawyers ask prospective jurors a series of questions. Those questions and answers allow the parties to assess the potential juror pool and decide which potential jurors they should seek to eliminate.
Essential Questions About Jurors’ Credibility Preconceptions
In R.S.’s case, his lawyer sought to ask the jury pool whether they would “believe the testimony… of a witness called by the prosecution more than the testimony of the defense.” The judge rejected the question, stating that, in his experience, it confused some potential jurors and drew an automatic “no” response from almost all prospective jurors. The only prospective jurors to say yes in the judge’s court were individuals who “just want to get out of jury duty.”
The Appellate Court determined that the judge should have allowed the jury pool to answer that question. The Maryland Supreme Court has previously declared that trial courts “must ask questions about biases directly related to the crime, the witnesses, or the defendant.” The court said that an accused person has a legitimate basis to rule out a prospective juror if that person presumes a witness is more believable because they are affiliated with the state or less credible because they were connected to the defense.
The defense, therefore, has a right to ask questions related to that bias. The question R.A.’s attorney tried to put forward was “designed to uncover prejudgment of credibility,” and the court was required to ask it. That mistake was the kind of “harmful” procedural error that required reversing the conviction and granting the man a new trial.
When facing possible criminal charges, the keys to a successful outcome may lie in actions taken long before a trial starts. Whether negotiating with the prosecutor to get an out-of-court agreement or engaging in effective pretrial steps in anticipation of a trial, having effective counsel matters greatly. If you are accused of a crime, the knowledgeable Maryland criminal defense attorneys at Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC are here to help. Contact us today at 301-519-2801 or via our online form to schedule your consultation.