Filed: Mar. 16, 2018
Latest Update: Mar. 16, 2018
Summary: ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR JURY QUESTIONNAIRE AND GRANTING IN PART MOTION FOR ADDITIONAL TIME GARLAND E. BURRELL, JR. , Senior District Judge . Defendant Emilio Lara ("Defendant") requests that a jury questionnaire he proposes be used "preceding any oral voir dire by the Court or the parties." Mot. Jury Questionnaire at 1:23-24, ECF No. 62. He also seeks "additional time for (1) his jury voir dire, and (2) his opening statement." Mot. Additional Time at 1:25-26, ECF No. 63. The government opp
Summary: ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR JURY QUESTIONNAIRE AND GRANTING IN PART MOTION FOR ADDITIONAL TIME GARLAND E. BURRELL, JR. , Senior District Judge . Defendant Emilio Lara ("Defendant") requests that a jury questionnaire he proposes be used "preceding any oral voir dire by the Court or the parties." Mot. Jury Questionnaire at 1:23-24, ECF No. 62. He also seeks "additional time for (1) his jury voir dire, and (2) his opening statement." Mot. Additional Time at 1:25-26, ECF No. 63. The government oppo..
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ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR JURY QUESTIONNAIRE AND GRANTING IN PART MOTION FOR ADDITIONAL TIME
GARLAND E. BURRELL, JR., Senior District Judge.
Defendant Emilio Lara ("Defendant") requests that a jury questionnaire he proposes be used "preceding any oral voir dire by the Court or the parties." Mot. Jury Questionnaire at 1:23-24, ECF No. 62. He also seeks "additional time for (1) his jury voir dire, and (2) his opening statement." Mot. Additional Time at 1:25-26, ECF No. 63. The government opposes the motions. Opp'n, ECF No. 68.
Defendant has not shown that a questionnaire should be used in this case. As the government asserts:
This case does not warrant the use of a questionnaire prior to oral voir dire. It is a relatively simple case of a tax preparer charged with falsely inflating deductions, and there has not been substantial publicity. Contrary to the defendant's assertions, the charged conduct does not involve controversial issues. See Def.'s Mot. #1 at 4-5. Taxpayers' immigration status is irrelevant, and any public controversy over tax law does not extend to whether people should be allowed to claim false deductions. Rather than wasting everyone's time with review of lengthy questionnaires, the Court can achieve greater efficiency by conducting oral voir dire in which most questions are asked of the entire panel.
Id. at 2:6-13. The current voir dire script, accompanying a transmittal order issued contemporaneously with this order, should be sufficient to surface bias, and many of the questions in the questionnaire are already part of or subsumed within questions the undersigned judge intends to ask during voir dire.
Defendant also moves to lift time restriction on additional questions during voir dire, Mot. Additional Time at 3:8-16, and for forty minutes in which to give an opening statement to the jury. The trial confirmation order established that "[e]ach party has twenty (20) minutes for voir dire, which may be used after the judge completes judicial voir dire (unless the judge decides to conduct all voir dire)," ECF No. 56 at 2:20-23, and that "[e]ach party has twenty (20) minutes to make an opening statement," id. at 4:20-21. Each side has thirty minutes for voir dire. Defendant's request to change the limit on opening statements is denied.
For the reasons stated above, Defendant's motion to compel use of a jury questionnaire, ECF No. 62, is denied, and his motion for additional time, ECF No. 63, is granted in part.
