Almost every national CLE program I attend has something about voir dire. I remember one in particular — about a year after I passed the bar — where some hotshot lawyer from another state was regaling us with stories about how voir dire took two days for a medical malpractice case.

He described tactics — how to begin laying the case theme in voir dire, the ability to use voir dire as a preliminary opening statement and what questions were crucial for discovering those jurors who could not decide cases fairly. I worked on a few cases in other states, and the voir dire process was long and drawn out and seemed to require days of preparation.

Fast forward to my first experience with a Maryland-style voir dire. It’s best described as short. In some cases I’ve since been involved in, it can be done in less than an hour. Some of the longer ones have lasted about 3 hours.

The hardest part (although not that hard) is understanding the process of counting in order to make strikes as effective as possible. Other than that, there is little that a trained monkey can’t understand.

Here in Maryland, our judges typically ask all of the questions. The parties submit proposed voir dire questions before the trial. The judge will look them over, decide what he/she wants to do, and if you’re lucky, might ask for some oral argument on the more unusual questions proposed by counsel.

Typically, though, it’s the same old thing. Some judges are loathe to step outside the boundaries of what has been done in the past; others are more apt to embrace other lines of questioning.

The process of rehabilitation is simply a joke. It may be out of necessity — if we excluded every person who had a heartfelt bias in favor or against one side, perhaps we wouldn’t have a panel left to pull from. But we’ve all seen some version of the following:

Judge: Mr. Juror—you raised your hand to question number 12. Tell me why.

Potential Juror: I had a run-in with the police a few years ago. I was brought up on a trumped-up charge because a neighbor of mine lied to the police, and the police believed it. The police don’t know what they are doing, and they are crooks.

Judge: In spite of that experience, you would be able to make a fair and impartial decision based solely on the evidence of this case, including testimony from police officers, right?

Potential Juror: I guess so. Sure.

And that’s it. The juror comes in, unless one of the lawyers strikes that juror with a peremptory. The problem is that the juror probably can’t be fair — he is simply giving in to what the judge clearly wants him to do.

The Maryland State Bar Association has formed a committee, chaired by Paul Mark Sandler to explore the possibility of model voir dire and changes to the voir dire process. This is exciting for Maryland attorneys, because there are so many opportunities for change.

The committee might recommend more questions that judges sometimes won’t ask. The committee might even recommend that lawyers be allowed to ask their own questions and follow-up questions. (Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.)

It’s impossible to know what will come out of that committee.  Any thoughts or hopes?

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