Split Verdict on Gen-X

Westwood attorney Tom Dempsey thought he had them pegged.

He was arguing a personal injury case on behalf of a middle-aged woman who had wrecked her shoulder bouncing down an inner tube ride at a Palm Springs water park. In the jury box sat a couple of Generation Xers--barely into their 20s, not exactly fresh-faced and eager, but still ready to try their hand at this civic duty thing.

“I thought they were going to be more open-minded,” Dempsey said, “because they hadn’t been polluted with the idea that people are out there trying to defraud the system” with phony claims.

Yeah, right.

From the start, Dempsey found, the younger jurors were antsy, their impatient expressions screaming out that they had lives to live, thank you very much, and they did not want to waste time hanging around court. Even worse, they seemed utterly indifferent to his client’s plight. In interviews with other jurors after the trial--which he lost--Dempsey figured out why.

“They had a preconceived notion that my client was better off than they were, or than they were ever going to be,” he said, “so they were not as concerned” with compensating her.

Lesson learned. Dempsey will not take Generation X for granted again.

And for good reason.

The sons and daughters of baby boomers are popping up in jury boxes everywhere. Stereotyped as apathetic, disillusioned cynics, they might not be too eager to show up for courtroom duty. But enough are responding to summonses that jury consultants estimate the typical panel of 12 jurors will include at least five Gen-Xers by the turn of the century.

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They’ll bring to the courthouse a distinct set of attitudes, experiences and learning styles that may affect the way trial lawyers present their cases--and the way justice is dispensed.

“When it comes to deciding ‘Is there a right or a wrong here,’ many of these younger jurors have been taught to look at things from different perspectives, so they may be less willing to pass judgment,” said former federal prosecutor Mark Holscher, now a defense lawyer.

Eager to keep in tune with the younger generation, Holscher crams before trials by watching popular sitcoms--just so he has a clue about the cultural icons and moral standards of the day. Over time, he’s learned an important trial tactic: When dealing with Gen-Xers, always spell out exactly why an alleged misdeed deserves punishment.

“You can’t assume that a younger juror is going to say that because it’s a crime, it’s wrong,” said Holscher, who prosecuted Heidi Fleiss on charges of tax evasion and money laundering. “You really have to explain why it’s serious.”

Yet despite the more tolerant attitude that Holscher detects among Generation X, today’s teenagers and young adults are not traditional liberals. A nationwide survey found that 95% of 18- to 24-year-olds favored tougher sentences for criminals.

“It isn’t as easy as saying, ‘They’re pro-prosecution’ or ‘They’re pro-defense.’ It’s not predictable,” said Santa Monica jury consultant Noelle C. Nelson.

Indeed, some trial lawyers say they have trouble identifying a coherent philosophy among jurors who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. The classic Gen-Xer gets her news from a variety of sources--from cable channels to the Internet to offbeat magazines--and plucks an idea or two from each, weaving a quirky personal philosophy.

“I don’t think there is as uniform a package of beliefs as there was before,” said veteran attorney Robert Warren, who found the baby boomer generation easier to read. “You might have someone who’s ultraconservative on criminal justice and economic issues, and also utterly pro-environment.”

The stereotypical Generation Xer, of course, is not supposed to harbor many political views at all. The prejudicial portrait made popular several years ago is of a grungy, apolitical geek with a sound-bite-short attention span, a television-glazed brain and a keyboard-clattering network of “virtual” computer friends.

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Drawing on that stereotype--and real-life interviews--jury consultants have reached some sweeping conclusions about how Generation Xers are likely to behave in court:

* They will be more impatient during testimony, and less tolerant of irrelevant information.

* They will be more receptive to video displays, and less adept at reading body language.

* When it comes to witnesses, they will be most impressed by a down-to-earth professional who gives them the evidence and gets off the stand quickly--not by a hoity-toity expert with a fancy resume and a taste for glib metaphors.

Those generalizations draw scorn from some veteran attorneys. Race, gender and life experience often sway perceptions a lot more than age, they argue.

“In my experience, knowing a juror’s age is not a very good way of guessing how they’re going to feel about something,” said former federal prosecutor David Sklansky, who now teaches law at UCLA. Plenty of his colleagues agree.

But trial consultants--who make their livings selling advice--insist that Generation X presents a very real challenge to litigators. First off, they say, lawyers will have to jazz up their presentations with snazzier graphics and punchier arguments. They will also need to jettison dated rhetorical styles, such as quoting the Bible.

“If they think they can stand up before some 25-year-old kid who’s a card-carrying member of Generation X and basically lecture for an hour, the way lawyers have been handling cases in this country since the Founding Fathers, that just doesn’t work,” said Jeffrey Herman, managing partner of the national jury consulting group Decision Research. “There’s something fundamentally different about the way these Gen-Xers [process] information that trial lawyers around the country are going to have to come to grips with.”

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Younger people are used to controlling the pace and content of the information they receive, Herman says. They’re accustomed to browsing through computer web sites, pausing to pick up interesting tidbits, scrolling disdainfully through dull spots. They’re also used to interacting with the material.

In contrast, the traditional trial format requires jurors to sit still for days or weeks, absorbing meandering testimony without asking questions and without a clear sense of where they’re headed.

Some Gen-Xers cheerfully admit they couldn’t hack it.

“I wouldn’t be good,” accounting student Terry Parks, 23, confided as she waited to be called to a panel on her ninth day of jury duty in the Los Angeles County Courthouse.

“I’d be in and out. I mean, I’d be in the courtroom, but thinking of what else I could be doing. I know you’re supposed to listen to all the evidence and come to a fair decision, but I’d just be saying anything . . . to get it over with,” Parks said as she picked apart a lunch-break pizza with long, curling pink fingernails.

Viewing such confessions as treason to their generation, other twentysomethings insist they would listen wisely and judge fairly if only given the chance. If they’re responsible enough to show up for jury duty, they argue, they’re responsible enough to render a verdict.

“I know the stereotype [of Generation X] is that we’re lazy and we don’t care, but I really don’t think that’s true,” said Laura Cohen, 26, who surprised herself by winning a spot on a recent Los Angeles jury despite her nose stud, her nine earrings and her spiky bleached hair.

Cohen had enjoyed her previous stint on jury duty, a medical malpractice case a few years back, and she rebuffed friends who offered tips on how to evade service this time around. “I think this is really important,” she said, grabbing a crumpled pack of American Spirit cigarettes from her bag. “That’s why I’m here.”