2.Jury Selection — Afternoon Orientation and Questionnaire Instructions

THE COURT: I want to welcome you to this proceeding of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and to thank you for coming here today. You are here, as I believe you probably know, because you have been summoned to be available for service as a trial juror in this court.

The resolution of legal controversies, both civil and criminal, by trial of the matter before a jury of citizens drawn from the community is one of the most fundamental principles at the core of our entire system of justice. You may recall from your study of American history that among the grievances against King George that was set forth in the Declaration of Independence were that he has "obstructed the administration of justice," and further, "has made judges dependent on his will alone." Because of their experience in this respect, the founders were determined that the Constitution of the new nation would guarantee the right to trial by jury, and they wrote that guarantee into the Sixth and Seventh amendments of the Constitution in the Bill of Rights. In doing so, they assured that the outcome of legal cases would ultimately be entrusted not to officers of the government alone, but rather, to the public: ordinary citizens convened and acting as trial jurors.

We're in the process of selecting a jury for the trial of a criminal case. The name of the case is United States v. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Mr. Tsarnaev is charged in the case in connection with events that occurred near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, and that resulted in the deaths of three people. He's also charged in the death of an MIT police officer and other crimes that occurred on April 18 and 19, 2013.

In a criminal prosecution the burden is always on the government to prove by factual evidence that the defendant is guilty of any crime he is accused of, and accordingly, every defendant is presumed to be not guilty until the government has proved otherwise at trial. The government bears the burden of proving a defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The jury that we are in the process of selecting today and in the next several days will have the task of considering the evidence produced during the trial, and deciding on the basis of that evidence whether the government has proven the defendant's guilt of the charges against him beyond a reasonable doubt or not.

This case differs from many other criminal cases, however, in a significant way. Usually after a jury has convicted a defendant of a crime, the presiding judge decides on what the punishment should be. In this case, however, Mr. Tsarnaev is accused of crimes that are potentially punishable by a sentence of death. If after trial he is convicted of any of these crimes, under the law it is the responsibility of the jury and not the judge to decide whether Mr. Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death, or instead, sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release, which is the only other possible sentence for these crimes.

In essence, in our democracy, we have committed these solemn and important decisions not to judges answerable to the sovereign alone, not to the press, not to public opinion, and certainly not to the mob. We have committed this important duty to ourselves collectively as the people, the people who establish the constitutional order in the first place. And we, the people, therefore, ask some of our fellow citizens to assume the high duty of convening as a trial jury to consider and resolve the issues presented with a firm disposition and commitment to do justice fairly and impartially.

Accordingly, it is the civic responsibility of every citizen to appear and serve as a juror when called unless seriously unable to do so. Such a service is both an obligation of citizenship and an opportunity to perform a vital public and civic function. Juries are composed of citizens from all walks of life, each of whom brings his or her own individual perspective and life experience to the task. You do not need to have any particular education or experience to be a juror; what you do need is a commitment to do justice. Acknowledging the importance of jury service is not to ignore the obvious point, that your appearance here is, at the very least, inconvenient. We ask jurors to set aside for a time their usual routines to perform an essential and necessary public service. Certainly serving on a jury, if you're asked to do so, will require you to make some adjustments in your daily lives.

You should not however think of your jury service, if you're chosen to sit, as an annoying burden. Jurors regularly report to my colleagues and to me that they have found their service to be one of the most interesting and memorable experiences of their lives. After most trials, I meet briefly with the jurors to thank them for their service. Uniformly, during those discussions, jurors tell me that the experience was worthwhile, interesting and fundamentally important to them.

Jurors who seemed to me at the outset to be nervous and unsure at the beginning of a case after a verdict have a calm and solemn sense of a duty responsibly performed. If you are chosen to serve in this case, I fully expect you will find the experience to be the same.

Let me tell you how we're going to proceed with the selection process. When I am finished with these preliminary remarks, a questionnaire will be distributed to each of you. You'll each fill out the questionnaire before leaving today. As you fill it out, please do not discuss either the questions or your answers with anyone else, including the court staff, who have been instructed not to help you with filling out the questionnaire. The information on the questionnaire must come from you and you alone.

Also, please understand there are no right or wrong answers to the questions. All that we ask is that you answer each question truthfully and completely to the best of your ability. The questionnaires are not intended to pry into personal matters unnecessarily. There are some personal things we must know in order to assure both sides in this case that the trial will be conducted before a jury that is in truth fair and impartial. Additionally, as a practical matter, the use of the questionnaires makes the process somewhat less time-consuming and inconvenient for you.

When you've filled out your questionnaire completely, you will give it to the court staff, and you will then be free to leave. During the coming week, the questionnaires will be copied and then reviewed by the attorneys working on the case and by me. The completed questionnaire will be reviewed initially only by the participants in the case and the Court. The filled-out questionnaires will not become part of the public record unless and until I determine whether they contain sensitive information that should be kept confidential permanently. If they do, I intend to keep that information and any possible follow-up questions concerning it from being available in the public record.

When you leave, the court staff will give you a telephone number to call next week so that you may listen to a prerecorded message that will tell you about your possible service in this case. Some jurors will be told then that they have been excused permanently, some jurors will be told to come to court again on a particular day to participate further in the process, and some jurors will be told to call in again later to get further instructions at that time.

If you are selected to serve, the trial proper is expected to start on or after January 26th, and is expected to last perhaps three to four months. The trial will generally be conducted on a schedule Monday through Thursday each week from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with time for breaks and lunch, of course. The jury will not ordinarily sit on Fridays except in a week where a legal holiday is observed on a Monday. The trial will continue through any school vacation week. If you are concerned that service as a juror in this case would be an unusually difficult hardship for you, you'll have the chance to describe that hardship in the questionnaire. If you're not excused then based on what you have written, which might happen, I will later discuss your hardship request in person with you when you come back to court. Any request to be excused for this reason will be seriously considered; however, I cannot guarantee you will necessarily be excused if you think jury service in the case would be a hardship for you because finding a jury that represents a fair cross-section of the community will always pose some degree of hardship for those citizens who are chosen to serve.

It is important that the men and women who are chosen to serve as jurors in this case be able to listen to the evidence presented in court and decide the issues in the case fairly and impartially. I'll be using those terms "fairly" and "impartially" again at times during our process. Let me tell you briefly what I mean. To serve fairly and impartially means to base a decision based on the evidence presented to you in court during the trial, applying the principles of laws as I will describe them for you, and not based on any bias or prejudice or anything else you have seen, heard, read or experienced outside the courtroom including anything you think you may have previously learned from, say, reports in the media.

There has been a great deal of publicity about this case and there will continue to be. The mere fact that prior to this you may have heard or read something about the case does not automatically mean that you cannot be a juror, but you must be able to decide the issues in the case based on the information or evidence presented in the course of the trial and not any information from any other source.

The purpose of the jury selection process is to ensure that each person selected is an appropriate juror for this case, that the jury as a whole will fairly represent the community, and that the jury will assure that the parties get what they are entitled to: a trial before a fair and impartial jury.

I now will introduce some of the people who will be involved in the trial of the case. The government is represented at this trial by Assistant United States Attorneys Al Chakravarty.

THE COURT: And an additional attorney, Steven Mellin, who was unable to be with us for this session.

The defendant, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is represented by attorneys David Bruck, Judy Clarke, Miriam Conrad, Bill Fick and Tim Watkins.

THE COURT: Thank you. You may be seated.

Although you have heard only briefly about the case this morning, and indeed have heard nothing in the way of evidence, it is extremely important until further notice that you do not discuss this case among yourselves or with anyone else. That is because as I've said, a jury's verdict must be based on the evidence produced at trial, it must be free of outside influence. Therefore, I now order each of you not to discuss this case with your family, friends or any other person until either I excuse you, or if you're selected as a juror, until the end of the case. This is a formal court order, the willful violation of which is potentially punishable as a contempt of court or otherwise.

You may tell others that you are possibly going to be a juror in the case, and you may discuss the schedule with your family and employer because they're entitled to know when you might not be available; however, you may not discuss anything else or allow anyone else to discuss things with you about the case until you're excused, or if you're a juror, until the case has concluded.

This means, among other things, that you may not speak to any member of the news media about the case. There is legitimate public interest in this case and the news media play a vital role in informing the public about it. It would, however, be improper for you at this time under your consideration as possible jurors to discuss the case or your role in it with any of them. So if anyone does approach you to speak about the case, you should politely decline. If anybody persists, please inform the jury clerk or other court staff about that.

Similarly, I instruct you now for the time being not to read, watch or listen to any reports about the case in the media, again, until either you have been excused or, if selected, until the case has concluded. If you should by chance encounter a news story in the newspaper or on the radio or television or on the internet, please just turn the page, change the channel or close the screen. Do not read, listen to or watch anything related to reports about this case, and do not under any circumstances do any research, including online research, about the case or anybody or anything connected with it. This includes, of course, Googling or otherwise researching the defendant, witnesses, the events, any of the trial participants including the lawyers and even myself.

Likewise, you must not communicate with anyone, not only in person, or allow anybody to communicate with you that way, but not by telephone, text message, Skype, email, various social media such as Twitter or Facebook. In addition, to protect the integrity of this process, please do not discuss this case or anything I have said to you this afternoon with other potential jurors or anyone else today.

So we're just about finished with these remarks.

Take the time to answer the questionnaire thoughtfully, honestly, completely. Remember, again, there are no right or wrong answers to any of the questions. Please write or print clearly. Do not fill out that portion of the form which you will see marked "Juror No.___." The court staff will fill those numbers in once you've completed your questionnaire.

If you cannot answer a question because you do not understand it, write: "Do not understand." If you can't answer a question because you don't know the answer, write: "Do not know." If you want to explain your answer to any question, you may do so in the space provided on the questionnaire, and if you need more space, there is space at the last question on the questionnaire where there are additional places for you to write. If you use that space, please be sure to indicate which question you're responding to in that space.

Fill out the entire questionnaire. If you would prefer to answer a sensitive question orally rather than in writing, you may write "private" in response to that question and we'll follow up orally with you. You'll receive two attachments with the questionnaire, A and B. These are lists of potential witnesses in the case. As you'll read in the instructions when you complete the questionnaire, you should treat them differently. If you believe you know someone on Attachment A, which is the longer of the two lists, then just write the number of that person -- there will be a number associated with the name -- in response to the appropriate question in the questionnaire. On the other hand, if you believe you know someone on Attachment B, which is a shorter list, just circle that person's name on that list and make no mark in the questionnaire.

Because your answers to all the questions in the questionnaire are an important part of this process, your answers, of course, must be truthful and you must sign the questionnaire under the pains of perjury at the end.

Again, when you've completed and signed it, you should give the questionnaire to a member of the court staff. Before that, you may not leave the room with the questionnaire or either of the attachments.

So let me conclude as I began by thanking you all for being here this afternoon and for taking part in this important process. We need your help and we need your honest performance in this important duty of citizenship.

We'll now recess the session of the court and distribute the questionnaires.