FOURTEENTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT

GEORGE L. ALLEN, SR. COURTS BUILDING

DALLAS, TEXAS 75202

(214) 653-6000

                                  Re: Jury Selection Procedures

Dear Bill,

First of all, please allow me a moment to thank you for taking your time to have lunch with me on Friday to discuss matters of concern to you personally and to the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association.  I felt that it was a most productive and positive conversation, and I wanted to put in writing my thoughts on some of the issues that we discussed.

As you know, it has been the pattern in the 14th that voir dire has tended to be relatively short.  Part of this has been a function of the number of cases pending in the court and in part because, to be perfectly frank as we were on Friday, many lawyers on both sides of the docket do not know how to conduct an effective voir dire.  Not boring the jury is terribly important, according to all of the studies, so I felt that cutting it down might also help in that department.  When lawyers who do know how to do voir dire have presented me with cogent, case-specific reasons that they need more time, I have consistently granted it.

Unfortunately, at the very time that the caseload in the 14th has dropped to the point that administration is no longer a factor in the length of voir dire (524 cases as of June 30, 92% of which are less than 18 months old) so that I can and do now ask the attorneys how much time they think they need during the pretrial, the perception has grown that I am not flexible on this point and am somehow out to micromanage the trial away from the attorneys.  I believe that this perception is very damaging to the court and its ability to administer justice effectively, so please let me put that to rest right now.  I do not have any interest in micromanaging the trial of the case, and the opening up of the discussion as to the length of voir dire and my responsiveness to it should be proof of that.  On the contrary, I have always wanted the attorneys to try their cases, as I think that judges who remain advocates are not doing what they are supposed to do in the system.  We have no client as judges except Justice and the truth of the case.

As you know, I do a part of the voir dire for the attorneys.  The standard part that I do is what I call the "underbrush", and the purpose is to clear away the attorneys, parties, and major issues as factors in the attorneys' information base.  Occasionally I am asked about using questionnaires.  I prefer to extract from the questionnaires the really serious questions and ask them from the bench for two reasons: 1) coming from the judge it is less inflammatory, no matter the subject, and therefore less harmful to the parties (put another way, "neutral" while still extracting the information from the jurors); 2) the notion that the questionnaires are confidential is, I believe, misleading [not to say "lying"] to the jurors, and for the judge to then destroy them robs the parties of data on which to base a Baston challenge.  By asking questions from the bench, if there should be a response (verbal or raised arm) that the attorney then wants to follow up, OK, but the attorney has not had to take his/her time to get to that point.  it's on my clock to set the stage for the lawyer to be truly effective in questioning the panel.

In the pretrial, the attorneys and I agree on a length of time for voir dire.  I must say that my experience in the court has helped keep some of them realistic as to how long they really do need.  For example, three hours on a MISTI case is unquestionably too long, but maybe not long enough for a multi-party tort or contract case.  That interaction has proven very useful in the process.  The next issue, of course, is what to do if something pops up unexpectedly halfway through the voir dire [normally, when the plaintiff is doing the questioning]?  Suddenly something becomes important that has not seemed so before.  The proper thing to do there is for counsel to approach the bench, and we can regroup.  I have no problem with that, as I told you, because this needs to be a very flexible system, given the complexity of many of our cases in the modern day.

As you know, we have the DTLA program coming up in September on voir dire, and I have been asked to preside.  I am delighted to have this opportunity to participate in an event that has the potential to address the problems on both sides of the bench that have led to this discussion.  I want to ask you, as part of the preparation for the program, to try and find the most effective voir dire people you know to represent both sides of the docket, and let's have them prepare for a relatively modest case, if not a MISTI, since that is the mainstream of our trials of late.  Let's have them show "how to do it" to those who attend.  Also, as I suggested, you might want to consider having the judiciary and defense bar invited as well, since it is my observation that this is systematic, not just a problem on on side of the docket.  I think that the broad view will be the best, both in terms of addressing the issue and resolving it.

Again, I want to thank you for your input and your suggestions and for listening to my views.  It is this kind of thing that normally has to wait for Bench/Bar, but this proves we need it more often than once per year.

With my thanks, I have the honor to remain

                                                                            Your obed't serv't

JMM/jrc

cc: Vincent Walkowiak