Is there an ideal juror for Donald Trump?
Most criminal defense attorneys like school teachers, nurses, engineers, and Moms with kids under 10. Understanding, caring, and obsessed with possibilities and potential.
Prosecutors like bankers and insurance company types — people who are very comfortable saying no.
The science of jury selection is complicated by trying to do three things at once. Finding a juror that will like you, like your client, and who will buy into “your story of the case” is often undone by a miscalculation during voir dire.
Jury consultants like to focus of getting the ideal juror.
Trump’s ideal juror is likely a white male, mid 40s, condo owner (Trump’s reputation as a landlord is horrific), married but living apart from wife (a not atypical situation in NYC where people cannot afford to get divorced), and their job should pay mid to high six figures.
Problem is Manhattan is not as white male-y as it once was. While almost 60% of the borough is white, that figure falls to nearly 50% when it’s distilled down to non-Hispanic whites.
And if you’re looking for the most whitebread of that group ethnically (Northern Europeans), fewer than 25% of Manhattanites fit into that demographic.1
They’ll have to half that to 11% to get just men. So basically, a Generation X2 guy living in the Upper East Side.
Now this guy cannot work for bank, a real estate developer, construction firm, or law firm (lawyers, whether they are prosecuting or defending a case, generally eschew having a “legal eagle” in the jury room). That leaves Trump with pharmaceutical companies, one of the big accounting firms, stock brokers, insurance, etc.
But given how Trump’s company is doing on the NYSE (it’s dropping like a rock) and how his $465 million his business fraud went, Trump’s lawyers might want to narrow the employer of the ideal juror down more. Probably just Big Pharma and Insurance.
The problem for Donald Trump is that one of the first questions asked during voir dire (in Trump’s case it will be asked by Judge Merchan) is “Would being on a jury for 2 months cause anyone an economic hardship?”
Generation X white males making bank in the business world aren’t going to risk ther careers on a felony business fraud case.
Guess who will? Union members, government employees, and people under 30. Plus retirees. And while retirees might be a source of hope for Donald Trump, keep in mind Trump was landlord in Manhattan for 50 years.
The counter-intuitive to find the “ideal juror” is avoiding the “worst juror” for one’s client. See paragraph above for a definition.
By Noahnmf - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131605713
Generation X encompasses people born between 1965 and 1985.