On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:26:37 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> His medical expertise could also be a liability to the prosecution, so
>> add to that that he's been involved in malpractice suits and he would
>> be seen as undesirable in some instances.
> 
> Also, neither side wants an expert on the jury, as the others might give
> his opinion more weight than their own. If you have a case about
> someone's injuries, you're not going to have a doctor on the jury,
> because the rest of the jury would just defer to the doctor on the
> opinion of whether (say) the defendant was strong enough to cause that
> kind of injury.
> 
> They want you looking at the evidence presented, not the evidence
> someone else learned in school. :-)

Yep, that's certainly true, too.

It can be risky to play the odds if the jury has an expert on it; if you 
(as the prosecution or the defense) can convince the expert, then that 
can work to your side's favour.

In order to get through the vetting process, both sides would have to 
think they had strong enough evidence to convince the expert they were 
correct.  That's going to be a pretty rare occurrence - and you can't 
really get to know someone's full depth of experience during voir dire, 
either - it's not a long process.

Jim

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