Bull is a TV show that my family began watching a couple of years ago when it first came out. The protagonists is Dr. Jason Bull, who created this firm that specializes in the analysis of criminal trials, called Trial Analysis Corporation. Bull and his team use human intuition, psychology, and technology to understand all the different people in a trial. This ranges from the jury to the lawyers, witnesses, and defendant, and try to get whoever they are defending to be freed of their charges. However, one of the biggest focuses is on the jury. Throughout all of the episodes, there is a constant pressure to make sure that the jury will side with the defendant. There are cameras within the courtroom that capture the juror's facial expressions and movements and use that to figure out if they are ‘red’ or ‘green’. ‘Red’ means that they are siding with the prosecution and ‘green’ is when they are siding with the defense, and they want to get all ‘green’ faces no matter what it takes. Bull and the people watching the jury at his office communicate through headsets on the status of the jurors. Then Bull, who is in the courtroom, will communicate to the lawyer, Benny, the status, and Benny will proceed from there with the knowledge he gained from the jury reading technology. The idea is that working together as a team will enable them to win any court case in their favor - they just need to be creative, and select a good jury, or at least one that can be persuaded with Bull's tactics.
However, as interesting as this show is, like medical and police dramas, the shows are more focused on entertainment rather than how realistic the plot is. And Bull is far from realistic. The approach taken in Bull, which is to spend thousands of dollars (probably way more) on all this state of the art technology is absurd and in no normal person's budget. Also, Bull and other members of his team conduct themselves in very non-professional ways throughout the episodes, which would never be allowed to be so blatant in real life.
But overall, Bull is an entertaining legal drama that focuses on the jury way more than other shows do. It also comes with lots of drama inside and outside of the courtroom, so if that seems at all interesting you can check out the show on CBS.
I agree that jury selection is incredibly important and can decide the case. For example, in the OJ Simpson murder trial, a large portion of the jury was made up of black women who loved OJ (the Juice!) but hated Nicole. They were angry that she “stole” OJ from the black community. So, they weren’t very sympathetic to Nicole, and some thought it was her fault she was killed. She could’ve “just left.” They also wanted to get back at the justice system for the injustices in the Rodney King case–the beatings that are all too familiar to black people and the initial acquittal of the white police officers. So, many were biased for OJ and despite his motive, lack of an alibi, and the literal trail of blood from Nicole’s house to his estate, they found him not guilty. In an ideal world, juries would be perfectly unbiased and would only look at the evidence, not their personal feelings about the accused, victim, and society. However, jurors are human, and this is simply not the case.
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