Bad Rap: A "Good Juror"
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Who is hosting this podcast episode?
Hi, I'm Brian Buckmeyer, an ABC News legal contributor and host of Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy. Sean Combs is currently on trial, and on my podcast, we're covering everything that goes on in the courtroom, from the prosecution and the defense. We'll bring you one update every week right here on Fridays, but you can get extra content, including a whole extra weekly episode that's not available anywhere else if you follow Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy, wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, here's our latest episode.
Hey, it's Brad Milkey. This week on The Crime Scene Weekly, we're talking about a mom who gained national attention for faking her own kidnapping. Sherry Papini is back in the spotlight, but now she's changing her story and trying to change her custody arrangement with her kids. Listen to the latest from the case on The Crime Scene Weekly.
This week, jury selection kicked off in the trial of Sean Diddy Combs.
The Sean Combs sex trafficking and racketeering trial in New York is expected to have a jury seated by Friday. The judge currently has 45 prospective jurors in place. Both the prosecution and defense anticipate the jury will be finalized by the weekend.
We're never really sure how long this jury selection process could take, but the judge has been running a very tight ship, and so we seem to be on track for the trial to start next week. We could hear opening statements as early as Monday, May 12th. This week, we saw dozens of prospective jurors cycle in and out of the courtroom. They included a massage therapist, a freelance writer, an investment analyst, and a high school wrestling coach, a real cross-section of New Yorkers. One by one, they answered questions from the judge. Questions like, have you listened to podcasts about this case? What social media do you use? Also, questions about whether they think they'll be able to listen to testimony that's sexual in nature, about things the government says are a crime. What's the purpose of these questions? It's to figure out whether the juror can give Sean Combs a fair and impartial trial. Legal minds like me refer to this whole jury selection process as voir dire. It means to speak the truth.
While the courtroom theater has already begun, the government and the defense have been preparing behind the scenes for months. And gaming out jury selection is a crucial step in that preparation. Think about it. The 12 jurors and six alternates who will be seated for this trial are going to hear all of the arguments, listen to all of the witnesses, and see all of the evidence. This assortment of people will ultimately decide whether Sean Combs is guilty or not. He continues to deny all of the charges against him. So in this episode, we're going to hear from someone who knows a lot about the strategizing that goes into jury selection and how that could play into this case.
I think if you're the defense, you certainly want an individual who has kind of a untraditional sexual lifestyle, for example. Probably someone who hasn't followed the case very closely because I think a lot of the media attention has not been very positive to Sean Combs. For the prosecution, you would want probably the reverse.
This is Bad Rap, the case against Diddy. I'm Brian Buckmeyer, an ABC News legal contributor and practicing attorney. This episode, a good juror. My guest today is Eric Rutich. He's a senior litigation consultant with Blueprint Trial Consulting. His job is to help legal teams prepare for trial, including jury selection. And to be clear, he is not working on Diddy's case. Now, before we hear my conversation with Eric, I just want to mention that as a former public defender, I've never worked with a jury consultant. This process we're going to describe, it doesn't happen on every case. Actually, far from it. That's because jury consultants are expensive. They typically work on really big cases with really deep pocketed clients.
We know from court records that Combs' lawyers are using a jury consultant. And even more rare, so is the prosecution. So I started off by asking Eric about what his job entails. I think a lot of people haven't heard of a jury consultant or at most, maybe they've seen a fictionalized version on TV.
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