Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius interviewed for Will True-Crime Docuseries Change How Jurors Think?
Though if you ask professional jury consultants, someone plucked fresh from devouring Making a Murderer might not even make it past their first day of civic duty. “You would want to have the attorney ask: ‘How long did you watch it? With whom might you have had conversations about what you saw? Have you done anything in furtherance of your feelings about the show? For instance, some sort of social-media post,’” advises trial consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, who’s helped select juries for clients representing both plaintiffs and defendants, notably including O.J. Simpson’s 1994 defense team. “By gaining that information, you’re going to get a good mind-set of [whether] they were biased in favor of Mr. Avery and against the prosecution or police.” Moreover, she projects that potential jurors’ familiarity with Making a Murderer in particular “will be a significant question on criminal cases from here on out. We used to ask those questions about CSI because it was pretty predictive of someone who was a defense-prone juror.”
Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius Interview on Fox & Friends
…the Fifth Amendment guarantees a defendant a jury of their peers, which, over time has come to mean a jury that is reflective of community conscience…
Calif. Jury Clears Hyland’s In $255M False Ad Trial
A California federal jury on Friday cleared Hyland’s Inc. in a $255 million nationwide class action that alleged the company misled tens of thousands of purchasers into believing their homeopathic products were effective for various ailments.
The representative class of purchasers of seven products claim that Hyland’s, through its marketing and packaging, misrepresented its products as effective for allergies, leg cramps, migraines and sleeplessness, among others. The plaintiffs sought full refunds, totaled at $255 million.
Cunningham Not Guilty
It took the jury 3 hours to come up with their verdict. After more than 10 days of testimony, the jury found Brock Cunningham not guilty on charges of child abuse and murder in the first degree.Cunningham was on trial regarding the death of 3-year-old Natalie Pickle after an incident occurred in November 2008 that led to her death.Cunningham claimed that on November 19, 2008, Pickle had been jumping on her bed when she fell and hit her head.When he went to see what the noise was he heard…
Read the original article published in the Dodge City Daily Globe »
Interview with Boston’s NPR on High-Profile Cases
Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius and Robin Young discuss the difficulties involved in finding impartial jurors for high-profile cases.
Interview with KABC regarding Zimmerman Trial Jurors
Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius discusses the Zimmerman trial with KABC.
Interview with BBC regarding the Boston Bomber Trial
Listen in as Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius discusses the Boston Bomber Trial.
Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius has been dubbed a ‘Pre Trial Pro’ by the American Bar Association
Pretrial Pros
Jury consultants are changing with the times 20 years after the O.J. verdict
by Marc Davis and Kevin DavisThe nearly 20 years since a jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murder have left numerous marks on the national psyche and the legal profession. And for at least one area of legal services—jury consultation—that mark is a measure of rapid growth.
Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, who rose to national prominence as a jury consultant for Simpson’s criminal defense team, has seen the number of consultants rise significantly.
“A multiplicity of people have entered the profession,” says Dimitrius, founder, president and CEO of Dimitrius & Associates in Henderson, Nevada. “Jury consultants are now part of the legal culture for civil, criminal and corporate cases.”
Numbers Tell the Story
That growth is reflected in the membership of the American Society of Trial Consultants, which has expanded from fewer than 20 members in 1983 to around 300 today and publishes a magazine featuring social science research for jury consultants.
Dimitrius says her client list also has expanded since the O.J. trial. “In my practice, I’ve worked for both the plaintiff and defense sides of a trial. In corporate cases I’ve worked on everything—product liability, patent infringement, breach of contract, you name it.”
Says John O’Malley, a partner at the Los Angeles office of Fulbright & Jaworski, “I can’t imagine at this point not using jury consultants or focus groups.” He started hiring jury consultants in the 1990s.
Richard Gabriel, president of Decision Analysis in Los Angeles, worked with Dimitrius on the O.J. trial. “Certainly, the O.J. Simpson trial created a lot of awareness of what we do—and also created myths that we’re only jury pickers,” says Gabriel, author of Acquittal, a book about some of his famous cases. “Hiring consultants is also about risk evaluation.”
Gabriel studies what juries want to see, what their biases are, and how they absorb and evaluate information. “How do I make a complex case more clear and more compelling?”
Rich Matthews, a senior trial consultant with Juryology in San Francisco, agrees that the term jury consultant is a misnomer.
“What we do is so much broader than what happens with a jury. The jury selection process is the least important thing we do, but the most public,” he says. “The bigger things we do really happen before that. It’s really trying to resolve the dispute before trial.”
That’s where focus groups and mock trials come in, which have elements of jury selection. Gathering data on how people view cases, Matthews says, helps lawyers to frame those cases and build the narratives they need to make better arguments.
Tech Footprints
A big shift since the Simpson trial is how technology has changed the nature of jury research. “What we have now that we didn’t have 20 years ago to research jurors is social media, the Internet, Facebook, LinkedIn—a prospective juror’s entire social media footprint,” Dimitrius says. “We can now also conduct online focus groups. We can do an Internet search for information on prospective jurors.”
Mark Calzaretta, director of litigation consulting with Magna Legal Services in Philadelphia, says online technology helps in the selection of jurors who’d be most sympathetic to a litigant’s case.
One new and effective method of developing a potential juror’s profile—psychological, social, economic, political, educational, religious—is the online focus group, which can be done virtually anywhere instead of having to gather people in one location.
While jury consultants are working smarter, so are potential jurors. “The average juror has changed since the O.J. case,” Dimitrius says. “The average juror is more sophisticated now, more familiar with legal terms and procedures.
Because of TV shows, jurors are now more knowledgeable,” she says. “There are also websites that tell prospective jurors how to get out of jury duty.”
Originally published in the January 2015 ABA Journal.
Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius featured in the Miami Herald
Social media delayed: a case of life and death
By Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, Ph.D., Amy Singer, Ph.D. and Diana Greninger
Jury selection for Jodi Arias sentencing phase began this Monday in Arizona. Given this case’s publicity, social media has once again come into question. As citizens, we must ask ourselves, is it possible social media is affecting our jury system? Are defendants in these high publicity trials in fact getting a fair and impartial jury of peers? How can attorneys select a panel of impartial jurors once the case has been broadcasted to the world? Is social media affecting witness testimony or any other aspects of a trial?
It has come to light that many of the defendant’s witnesses have refused to testify as they have received death threats. Death threats can be qualified as witness intimidation, which is illegal in the United States. Yet, it is becoming more prevalent amongst high publicity cases.
Judge Sherry Stephens ruled that she will not allow live streaming of the sentencing trial, live tweeting or Facebooking by reporters this time around, in part to protect the few witnesses who are still willing to testify for Arias. Yet, because of the first amendment, she cannot exclude reporters and their cameras from the courtroom, she can simply require that they wait until the verdict comes out to publish video taken of the court proceedings.
This time around, the defense has also asked for access to potential jurors’ twitter accounts as a way to avoid stealth jurors. However, given this information has been made public, who is to say such potential stealth jurors won’t delete their past tweets or social media posts and get themselves empaneled despite having already made a decision about Arias’ outcome? Who is to say someone won’t finagle a way to share sensitive courtroom information with the general public on a delayed social media feed during jury selection or even during the trial?
While the judge has ruled no live video streams should be made available, we can be certain reporters and even spectators will be creating delayed tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and articles about proceedings. Among these posts, some will be truthful but most will not. Such information can have quite an impact on jury selection, which is expected to last three weeks.
In this case, potential jurors, spectators, reporters and the public have yet to see how someone’s life can be impacted by what is said or shared online. There is no social filter for what people post online. It is so easy to exaggerate or put one’s own slant on a courtroom’s daily events knowing they will not be held accountable in some fashion. Most people don’t realize tweets on their personal account can be shared and produce such a life or death effect. Most people simply relish in the fact their post or tweet got shared or retweeted, rather than on the end result.
This trial is about a single issue: life or death. How should this decision be made? By social media or a by a fair trial? Is social media becoming an outlet for people to release their anger? Who in their right mind makes death threats to witnesses? Are these people’s posts and threats affecting the outcome of life vs. death if witnesses are afraid to testify?
We all have opinions, life experiences and general beliefs that affect our decision making but when it comes down to the jurors who will be deciding this case, and whether Jodi Arias should live or die, it is imperative for the empaneled jury to rely solely on what is coming from their heart and what they have heard in court rather than what they heard from the outside. An outside that always thinks it knows all the facts, but truly it does not. Anyone involved in a trial can tell you that the media rarely depicts the truth.
Because of that component, it is understandable why judge Stephens has made the decisions she has and is not releasing the supplemental juror questionnaire nor allowing live news coverage of this trial until a verdict is reached. Her decision is similar to the Canadian jury media system which allows no coverage to be shown until a verdict is reached.
However, she cannot control everything. Information will be leaked. The reporters and spectators will write their stories, tweet their tweets and write their blogs. They will simply do it on a delayed feed. They might write a blog every night about what is happening, how Arias is coming across, how she is dressed, etc. Jurors will have to be extra diligent not to access any social media or news reports. Judge Stephens and the attorneys will surely have to monitor the selected panel’s social media activity if they are not being sequestered.
Judge Stevens has taken some steps in the right direction, but will it be enough? Are cell phones and lap tops being confiscated upon entering the courthouse as it is often done in federal courthouses? Perhaps that would keep folks from taking down quotes verbatim and posting them in a delayed schedule, despite her rulings. In what other ways do you think social media will affect this trial? Join the conversation.
Dr. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius in the News
New Jodi Arias trial set to determine life or death for convicted killer
Aided by consultant on OJ Simpson trial, court will attempt to select impartial jurors from in high-profile murder case
Jodi Arias’ guilt has been determined. The only thing that remains to be decided is whether she dies for killing her ex-boyfriend.
More than six years after the death of Travis Alexander, and more than a year after Arias was convicted of murder, a second penalty phase to determine her punishment gets under way on Monday with jury selection.
Arias acknowledged that she killed Alexander in 2008 at his suburban Phoenix home, but claimed it was self-defence. He suffered nearly 30 knife wounds, had his throat slit and was shot in the head. Prosecutors argued it was premeditated murder carried out in a jealous rage when Alexander wanted to end their affair.
The 34-year-old former waitress was found guilty last year, but jurors could not agree on a sentence. While Arias’ murder conviction stands, prosecutors are putting on the second penalty phase with a new jury in another effort to secure the death penalty. If the new jury fails to reach a unanimous decision, the judge will then sentence Arias to spend the rest of her life behind bars or to be eligible for release after 25 years.
At least 300 prospective jurors will be called in the effort to seat an impartial panel, not an easy task in the case that has attracted so much attention.
“You’d have to have been living in a cave to have not heard about Jodi Arias,” said Phoenix defense lawyer Mel McDonald, a former judge and federal prosecutor. However, McDonald added, an impartial juror doesn’t mean they have never heard of Arias, just that they haven’t made a decision on whether she should live or die.
Jury consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, who has worked on numerous high-profile cases, including the murder trials of Scott Peterson and OJ Simpson, said a key obstacle for Arias’ attorneys will be identifying so-called stealth jurors who will lie to get selected after already making up their minds on punishment.
“I can assure you they’re going to have at least one person on that panel that has an agenda,” Dimitrius said, adding that the possibility of another sentencing mistrial should be a huge concern for prosecutors.
“It just takes one whack-job, if you will, to hang a jury,” Dimitrius said.
She also said that in such high-profile cases, even prospective jurors who don’t know much about the trial might find themselves suddenly interested and ignore the judge’s admonishments to avoid any outside research. The jury questionnaire used to screen panelists will not be made public until after the jury is seated.
“They’re largely going to be focused on the media,” Dimitrius said. “Did you follow the case? Did you watch the TV coverage? Did you watch the trial every day? They’re going to want to find out if this is someone who is a court watcher or someone who just happened to see it in the paper the next day.”
One key difference in the second penalty phase is that there will be no live television coverage. Judge Sherry Stephens ruled that video cameras can record the proceedings, but nothing can be broadcast until after the verdict.
Arias’ five-month trial began in January 2013 and was broadcast live, providing endless cable TV and tabloid fodder, including a recorded phone sex call between Arias and the victim, nude photos, bloody crime-scene pictures and a defendant who described her life story in intimate detail over 18 days on the witness stand.
Arias’ attorneys claimed the televised spectacle led to threats against one of her lawyers and defence witnesses who opted not to testify.
Citing Arias’ right to a fair trial, Stephens is erring on the side of caution. The retrial is expected to last until mid-December.