The Sound of Pursuit
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The Sound of Pursuit
Reading the Room: Jury Research
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Twelve strangers walk into a courtroom. By the end of the trial, they decide whether someone walks free or loses everything. The lawyers spend months building a case. But who's been studying the twelve people who decide the verdict?
That’s jury research. It’s one of the more interesting specialties a private investigator can get into, and the work can shape how a trial turns out. Our guest, Vicki Maran, does this for a living. She's a co-founder of IntelliSeek Investigations, an Atlanta firm focused on open-source digging in background investigations. In this episode, we'll hear about her work helping attorneys pick juries in cases with very high stakes.
IntelliSeek Investigations: https://www.intelliseekinvestigations.com/
Host: Hal Humphreys
Guest: Vicki Maran
Sponsored by: TLOxp®
Music provided by Jason White, who composed our theme.
Special thanks to Kim Green, who produced this episode.
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Pursuit Magazine and PI Education are part of StoryboardEMP, a media and education company in Nashville, TN. Pursuit, a free online magazine for private investigators, explores all things investigative, from gumshoe techniques and surveillance tech to industry news and crime in media. PI Education, its sister brand, provides online continuing education for licensed PIs. Pursuit and PIed are owned and edited by husband-wife team Hal Humphreys, a PI, and Kim Green, a writer and radio producer.
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Twelve strangers walk into the courtroom. By the end of the trial, they decide whether someone walks free or loses everything. The lawyers spend months building the case, but has anyone been studying the 12 people who decide that person's fate? That's called jury research. It's one of the more interesting parts of this job, and the work can shape how a trial turns out. My guest does this for a living, as you took a winding road to get there. Stick around and find out more.
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SPEAKER_03Welcome back, everybody. My guest today is Vicky Marin, head of project management and client development at IntelliSync Investigations based in Atlanta, Georgia. IntelliSync does background investigations with a real focus on social media and open source digging. They work with law forms and corporate clients, plus plenty of fellow investigators on cases where real money or verdict is on the line. I'm going to bring Vicky in real quick. Vicki, welcome to the Sound of Pursuit, and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. It's an honor to be here.
SPEAKER_03But before we get to the topic of jury work, I want to hear how you got here. What's the story? How did you end up in investigations?
SPEAKER_01Well, it was not a linear um journey. I um started out by going to paralegal school in Atlanta, which is where I'm based. And um I worked as a paralegal and law firms, small, medium, and large, big law, for about eight years. And after that, I went to work in product management for uh in marketing for a company that before the internet even existed put public record information online for attorneys as a subscription. Subscribe to the service, and they would get public records available to them through the subscription. After that, I went to work as a manager in a litigation support services company. Worked there for 10 years before they told me that I had pretty much maxed out my ability to grow, which did not please me in the least. So I um I left and I dabbled in forensic accounting. And um then in 2014 went to work for a company where I conducted social media and jury selection research. And I have been in that space for the last 12 years.
SPEAKER_03That is certainly not a linear path. And um, but I here's the thing all of those things inform what you do today. That that's that's the that's the part of what you do that that like all of these other things, public records research, social media research, just knowing human beings um is is pretty impressive. Now, people, you and I both know this. People like to romanticize the work that we do as private investigators, but but jury research, jury consulting can be really difficult to break into. What were the real hard parts for you and it it the stuff that nobody warned you about?
SPEAKER_01As you were saying, that everything I have done up to this point has given me the ability to understand better what I do. What nobody ever told me about was the learning curve. And so when I started doing this, I thought, oh, okay, you know, like with any other job, you have a three-month learning curve, six weeks, three months, whatever. Um, and so at the end of three months, I thought, okay, I've never really felt this um uninformed before in a job. And um I thought, okay, well, maybe it's six months. And at six months, I thought, okay, I still don't know it all. And at three years, I didn't know it all. And at 12 years, I'm still learning.
SPEAKER_03It's a lifelong learning curve. Um, it's and it my thought is when you know everything there is to know, you probably need to stop doing the work because you're not learning anymore.
SPEAKER_01And then it's probably not fun either.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I've often I've often talked about the idea of if you're so comfortable um with with interviews or testifying or whatever it is, that it doesn't make you a little bit nervous. It's time to stop and think about do I need to keep on doing this work? Because you start to miss things when you're not not a little bit nervous and paying attention to details.
SPEAKER_01And you take them for granted.
SPEAKER_03That's it. That's it. So you're now head of project management, client development. That's a long way from where you started. How did you grow into this role?
SPEAKER_01Um, I knew within the last 12 years that I really, really enjoyed doing this is my calling. This this is really my passion. It only took me this long to figure it out. But I won't say how long, but it took me a long time to figure that out. And um, so I knew back in the fall, let's say late summer, fall, that um I needed to do something more. And um so I got together with five of my former colleagues, and we decided to create IntelliSeq investigations, and we didn't want to be in a position where there was a hierarchy. We had all been doing this type of work for a long time, we all knew each other's levels of expertise, and we said we're just all going to be co-founders of this business, each with different responsibilities, and that was pretty much how it how it went down. We um started working in January, wowing what we can do.
SPEAKER_03You know, uh my wife and I were friends for a long time before we got married, and I think that base of friendship is what has made this relationship work for so long. Um, and and the friendship just grows. But it occurs to me that the way you guys have have put this together, you're colleagues, you're obviously you like each other, you respect each other, but the that base of friendship and personal knowledge about each other, and then the the willingness and ability to come into this as five equal partners to do a thing is that only happens if you've been doing something for quite some time. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And you know, I I think very often about how fortunate I am to have been able to have these people in my life and to have been connected with these people so that we can do something that works. Because I don't I think that's very rare. I don't think that happens very often.
SPEAKER_03I don't think it does either. And I'm I'm again highly impressed. Now, for some of our listeners um tuning in to this podcast who think to themselves, I've watched several episodes of Bull, so I now want to be a jury consultant, right? Um how do they get a foot in the door? What what do you wish someone had told you on day one? Hey, this is this is the way to go about this. Aside from don't don't pay attention to Bull, the TV show.
SPEAKER_01Personally, I love bull. I think it's a good one. I watched every one of the episodes, and I was just so frustrated when the show got canceled or you know whatever. Um I just think that people do romanticize this. Um, I I know after having taken your course that you know it's where you talk about um, you know, investigators riding down the highway and their you know, Lamborghinis and portions.
SPEAKER_03It's it's it's a it's a it's a red Ferrari.
SPEAKER_01Okay, you know, I was what I had the right country. Um yeah, Rockford or um Magnum. It's it yeah, it's it's not that, it it's not that, but it it is knowing how to take public record information and to take um social media information and to come to some sort of synchrony with them. How do you take what's public record information? Let's say that somebody has had multiple divorces, and let's say that they've also had several DUIs, so now they've got um criminal traffic record. And let's go then to their um social media, and they have um several posts, shares, comments where they lead an eccentrically wild lifestyle, and so you can maybe gather from the public records and from the social media that this person or these people perhaps um have a different sense of what social responsibility is or personal responsibility, and so you can tell that by connecting the dots between all of the information. It's not just a matter of I can find Don knows social media, I can find his his profile. It's what can you do with that information that you have found?
SPEAKER_03I I I often talk to groups about the notion of information, which is available to anyone. Like most of the stuff we research is is publicly available, even the social media is generally publicly available. Um, there's no magic to finding the information, but information on its own is pretty useless. It can be helpful at times, but it it does, but we organize that information and then it becomes data, like we have a data set about this person. It becomes intelligence when we put that data into context, and it's a context that really paints a picture. I had a I had a guy we did a little background work on a couple of months ago who um had been arrested whilst driving home from Bonneroo with basically a pharmacy in his trunk. Um, and the reason he got arrested was he he went off the interstate and hit one of those water barrier canisters, and that was the reason for the stop. Um and then you do a little bit more research and you find out there's there's you know a pending foreclosure and some some divorce filings and that kind of business. And the investigator that I was working with on this project said, this doesn't mean this is a bad person, it just speaks to their decision-making ability. Um and and putting those things into context is is critical. I do want to I do want to dive into specifically the jury research part. Um for those out there that have never heard the term or have never seen you know the college-level course that is called the TV show Bull. For anyone who's not heard the term, put it in plain English. Like talk to me like I'm your your seven-year-old nephew. Um, what is jury research? What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01Research is where whoever is conducting the research assists a trial team in understanding who it is that's in that box. Both sides want the people in that box to be for them. And the laws of nature don't make that happen. So it's up to someone who is conducting jury research to go about the facts and do factual searching, factual research to support what the trial team is going to put together as their trial strategy.
SPEAKER_03I like that. Um I'm curious about this. I want I want to talk about some real specific things later. I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with the script for now. Where does where does the investigator fit into this process? I'm guessing the line between what a PI does and what a trial consultant does sometimes gets a little blurry. How does how does that teamwork work? With you're working with a trial team, you got a lawyer, possibly paralegal, possibly their own investigator, and you guys are working with them on the jury. How does that actually work?
SPEAKER_01Um I'm going to use this scenario where we're working with a trial consulting firm. So a trial consulting firm um on one side of the table works with a law firm. They um oftentimes the law firm will hire a trial consultant because they don't want to dig into the little pieces. They want somebody else to do the the work for them. They just want to go to court and present the case or come to court with their strategy. Um, the trial consultant will often come to IntelliSeek investigations and say, okay, we're going to have X number of um people in a panel, in a pool, and the client is looking for a jury of 12 and with alternates, and we want to reduce our pool from say a hundred to eighty five with um hardships. And um, and a hardship is something that these things happen. I mean, you know, the the judges realize that people are human and that they want people to be able to um be on juries, so they have to make the hardships allowable. Um, so after hardships, we then go in and look at public record information and social media comments, posts, mentions, um, maybe not necessarily from just that individual, but perhaps from family members as well, to get a full picture of a business person. Um, is this somebody who is going to be biased in one way or another? And oftentimes these people will have to fill out jury questionnaires, which we take that information and expound on it. Very often the jury questionnaire is not truthful. Um, and the person clearly doesn't realize that they're being um looked into. And so very often we can find where somebody who isn't being truthful on a jury questionnaire may not be truthful in their judgment either.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. You spend a lot of time um in the world of social media and open source work. How much jury research today is just figuring out who these people really are online?
SPEAKER_01Well, it it's not just figuring out who they are. It's taking their social media and their public record information, as I mentioned before, um, with finding out is this person, somebody who's been litigious? Do they have biases toward a case where big corporate is involved? Do they have a bias toward that? Um, have they been outspoken in that regard? And that may show up in um in social media where they may be associated with groups or um have likes that may indicate one way or another how they feel, but also in what you might find on Google and what you might find in publicly available and tie it all together and see who this person is and what this person believes to be true for them.
SPEAKER_03There's a lot of information out there available to pretty much anyone who wants to look for it, but taking the time to go through and put these pieces together to paint the picture. Um are there lines that you cannot cross? I'd like to talk about like the the ethics of juror research. Are there rules, what's allowed, and what what gets people in trouble?
SPEAKER_01It's very ethical, and there is a line that cannot be crossed. Um and for someone who is doing this in an ethical manner, that is public record information only. And I have told people because oh you can find out this information, and it's kind of like you know, being able to legally stalk somebody. What I can find out is what anybody else can find out. It's how we put it together. I can only find information that is publicly available, I can only look at somebody's uh Facebook profile that is not private. If it's private, I can't go into it.
SPEAKER_03I won't go into it. You can't create a fake account and friend them and then go into it?
SPEAKER_01Um, someone could, but I can't. Um I wouldn't know. Um there are platforms out there that do have trackers, and it is possible, for instance, on LinkedIn, for someone to be able to see who has looked at their profile.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, there are platforms out there that are that don't have that. And um, it's easier to to look. But I do not friend somebody. I do not get in touch with them in any other way. They basically never know that I have looked for them.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's the way it should be. Another thing I want to talk about just from a timing standpoint. Um so the list of jurors, the pool of jurors that are gonna be possibly considered for a case, um, some some call it the vanilla. List, right? You've got this 80, 100, 250, depending on what kind of case it is. I've gotten jury lists two hours before a trial is supposed to start. Now I've gotten jury lists two weeks before a trial starts. When you get a list last minute like that, how do you how do you tackle getting as much information as you can in that short period of time?
SPEAKER_01We work very hard. The ideal is having an advanced list, as you say, where you can get it two weeks in advance, where you can get it two days in advance. Um, the challenge is really working in real time. And when you have high numbers and you're working in real time, you can only provide so much information. So we may only be able to look for, say, voter record information and maybe Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, and then move on to the next one. And it's not going to be as um as in-depth of an investigation as you might conduct if you have two weeks to work on a hundred people.
SPEAKER_03There's also this sense of too much information. Um the attorneys oftentimes, even if the even if they get the full list ahead of time, uh, when it's time to do um what my friends in Texas would call vor dire, um uh when it's time to go through that process, if you're working on a capital murder case, maybe vor dire is is an individual process. Uh, a lot of times there's a group uh voidier process. Um how do you suss through what to give the consultants and the attorneys that is just the it's like the Goldilocks amount of information? Not too little, not too much. What's just right?
SPEAKER_01And they will ask, what can you do? Can you give me the full Monty in just a few minutes? I have worked on jury projects where I had two hours to work on one juror. I've had projects where I've had 10 minutes. So the Goldilocks is to find out enough information that gives the client um an idea of who this person is. And sometimes you can't find that. Yeah. And you know, for instance, if somebody has um private profiles and all of their profiles are locked down, and you really can't find anything, and you they don't have a a voting record, so you don't know do they tend to feel this way about um politics or that way about politics, or um they don't have any, they don't own any property, or they haven't been involved in any litigation. That's it. That's all you can find out.
SPEAKER_03You can't just make stuff up. If it's not there, it's not there.
SPEAKER_01And sometimes no information is information.
SPEAKER_03If you've got someone that's that's that careful about their footprint in terms of public records and social media, that tells you something about that person. Give me an example of a case where the jury research actually made the difference without burning anybody's confidentiality. Is there one specific case that comes to mind that you're like, yeah, this made a difference in this case?
SPEAKER_01I have had a few cases, not that many, but I have had a few cases where we have discovered that the potential juror was posting about jury duty. And that's a no-no.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um you're not supposed to be posting. The judge usually gives um the pool specific instructions on what they can do, who they can talk to, what sorts of media they can um entertain. Uh usually social media is a no-no. And we have been able to go back to whoever our client is and say this person is posting about social media, you may want to bring that to your team's attention. Um and uh there have been you know repercussions from that.
SPEAKER_03And the sad thing is when when the juror that is doing that is one that you think is going to be really good for your case. Yeah. Um, now I've done a little bit of this work myself, and and part of this the part that surprises me more than anything is at the end of the day, there is an element of reading people, which I I hesitate to even say that phrase because I think it's a really dangerous thing to do. But one of my attorney friends said, if, if nothing else, I'd like to have a high school guidance counselor sitting at the desk with me just watching these people to see how they're responding to me. Um and and without really good information, we we kind of this work with biases, right? We we just do and we make assumptions about this person is a doctor, they're gonna be reasonable, and then you find out after the fact when they're on the jury that, yeah, they're a doctor, um, but they're also an activist in some form or fashion, and they are totally going to be biased against your client. Um so I think this this notion of reading people is really fun. Um, have you have you do you I mean, do you does that sound right? Part of it just being able to read people?
SPEAKER_01Totally, totally. It's um it's being able, and it's so much fun to do. It's um it's it's looking at people and learning who they are, it's learning what their personalities are. It's we look at their at their likes, we look at who their friends are, we look at what groups they associate themselves with. We look at um campaign contributions. Um and from that we call together enough information to say this person might think a certain way. Just say it that way. Might think a certain way, or might not be able to think a certain way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, and and the idea of might think a certain way or might not be able to go a certain direction, both of those are critical.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Vicki, um, thank you so much for being here with me today. I I do want to ask you a couple more questions. Um, the first one is if somebody's listening and they want to add jury research to what they offer as an investigator, where would they even start?
SPEAKER_01I would that's an unfair question to me because I've had such a colorful background. But I would say find a mentor who can help you and guide you into steps and how to um become involved on LinkedIn, how to find connections and connections of connections on LinkedIn, um, how to um think critically. I think that critical thinking is probably one of the most important pieces of being an investigator. And the third piece of it is being able to write clearly and concisely. Um, I think if you can do all of those things, you're in pretty good shape.
SPEAKER_03I love it. Vicki, um, this was fantastic. Jury research is part of this business. Most people never get to see, and you just kind of made it shine here today. Um, if people wanted to, I don't know, if somebody wanted to try and get a foot in the door to work with you or just learn more about what IntelliSeq does, where should they go? How do they find you?
SPEAKER_01Um, I can be found on um our website through IntelliSeq Investigations.com. You can connect with me there and also connect with me on LinkedIn. And my name again is Vicki Marin. And um I'm I'm around.
SPEAKER_03Great. Vicki, again, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Um, I could literally sit here and talk to you all day long about jury research and and kind of knocking ideas back and forth. I do find it incredibly fascinating, and it's it's super nice to get to talk to someone that has focused on this work uh and and and is doing this as kind of a niche um project. So for my listeners out there, um this is this is one of those topics where, as an investigator, you know, there's more to life as an investigator than just doing surveillance. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's good work. I have done it. Um but you've heard me talk about criminal defense investigations, due diligence investigations. They're all manner of investigations we can do as private investigators. And jury research is one that you might want to think about. I'd like to thank Vicki Marin one more time for spending the time with us today. I'm Hal Humphreys, your host, and that is your Sound of Pursuit for this week.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to The Sound of Pursuit, a podcast by Pursuit Magazine and PI Education.