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I am looking for records of the jury selection process in federal U.S. cases.

I am particularly interested in records indicating the names of prospective jurors and whether they were challenged peremptorily or for cause by one of the parties.

Someone suggested to me that this information might be contained in court "transcripts".

Is that something that would be available on PACER (https://pacer.uscourts.gov/find-case/search-specific-court)?

If so, I wonder where I should look (I, unfortunately, have no experience using PACER, and don't know much about court terminology). What kind of document should I try to extract which might contain such records?

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You will probably not find juror names in virtually any transcripts. You would probably need to instead request copies of old summonses from the clerk's office, but I don't know that those will be available.

If you want to know about jurors being challenged, you would want to review the trial transcript. Transcripts are available through PACER, but only if someone has already ordered and paid for them, which is probably a minority of cases. If there is a particular case you're interested in where the transcript is not available, you would have the option of ordering the transcript yourself.

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  • Thanks for your quick answer. I do see in the few examples I could get my hands on that practice varies as far as recording names. This one, for example, has jurors' names groklaw.net/pdf4/ApplevSamsung-1546.pdf (pp 41-42), whereas this other one only ever refers to juror by their numbers millerandzois.com/files/jury_selection_1-32.pdf. I wonder what the dominant practice is in US Federal cases.
    – FZS
    Nov 17, 2021 at 19:57
  • My understanding was always that using numbers was standard practice. It's possible that it's different in criminal vs. civil cases, but I don't know.
    – bdb484
    Nov 17, 2021 at 20:12
  • Probably took a lot of effort (much more than simple search on online platform), and it wasn't at the Federal level, but I know some researchers and journalists in LA and NC have been able to get their hands on named jury lists: nola.com/article_25663280-c298-53ef-8182-9a8de046619c.html, news.law.wfu.edu/2018/07/….
    – FZS
    Nov 18, 2021 at 14:27
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Jury selection transcripts are part of the appellate record, if a party requests it, but while the appellate record is made available to parties for the purposes of filing their appeals and to the appellate judges for the purpose of reviewing their briefs. It is not generally uploaded to PACER and an appellate record is not generally available to members of the general public without good cause.

The kind of information that I suspect you are trying to develop (most likely using proper names as a proxy for race and ethnicity in the exercise of challenges to jurors) is most likely to be available (although in summary form only) in law review articles on civil procedure, criminal procedure, and empirical legal studies.

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