A majority of Americans, more than seven in 10, don’t think President Donald Trump can get an impartial jury in his ongoing legal battles according to a new survey about Americans’ trust in the broader legal system.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos, surveyed Americans from the general population and the population of those who have served on juries in the past 10 years to learn their attitudes toward various aspects of the criminal justice system.
The poll found that former jurors were more likely than the general population to trust in the criminal justice system as a whole, including attorneys across all fields, judges, and state and local law enforcement.
They also had a nearly 20 percent more favorable view of their fellow citizens serving on juries than their peers: 76 percent of former jurors reported “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in jurors, compared to 58 percent of non-jurors—the highest level of trust across both groups for all legal positions discussed.
But Americans are less optimistic about former President Donald Trump’s chances of receiving an impartial jury in one of the cases against him relating to his alleged illegal retention of classified documents. Only the documents case, one of four ongoing trials against the former president, was asked about.
In the survey, 1,017 members of the general population—those who haven’t served on a jury in the past 10 years—were asked, “If the cases against Donald Trump go to trial, how confident are you, if at all, that the court will be able to find and seat jurors willing to put aside their prior beliefs about Donald Trump and decide the case based on the evidence presented?”
Overall, 71 percent of those said they were not confident, including 30 percent who said they were “not at all confident” of this outcome and 41 percent who said they were “not too confident” about an impartial jury.
Only 28 percent expressed confidence that President Trump’s jurors could put aside their past perspectives. And the majority of those answering this way, 23 percent, said they were only “somewhat confident” of this outcome. Only five percent said they were “very confident” that President Trump could receive an unbiased jury.
By Joseph Lord
