A multi-criteria modeling approach to jury selection

The decision to select a particular group of individuals to serve as a jury is critically important to insure the fairness and impartiality in a trial under the United States Constitution. Yet, the amount of effort and, particularly, the time required under currently used methods of jury selection adds substantially to judicial system costs and can contribute to the inability of the courts to provide a timely hearing. This paper presents an approach to this decision process that incorporates current questionnaire data collection approaches with a multi-criteria, multi-objective modeling approach. An illustrative example from an actual trial case study is presented to demonstrate the informational efficacy of the modeling approach in selecting candidates for jury trials.