Dismissed for being an NRA member
How/why is that relevant?
I am guessing I am one of the few lawyers on the board, so I will try to explain, but first some context. As a juror, you can be relieved of your duty for three reasons: 1) Hardship (you are the self-employed sole breadwinner of the family/medical condition); 2) Strikes for cause (you cannot be impartial); 3) Peremptory strikes -- one side or the other does not like you. Unless you have a hardship that causes you to be released early (i.e. you have cancer treatment this afternoon) you should never know why you were struck from the venire panel (the big group of people).
Another important piece of information that a lot of venire persons never realize is that with peremptory strikes each side only gets 3, so that's a total of 6. The jury is usually made up of 12 people, plus two alternates. Usually, the two alternates are selected from a group of four people -- each party getting a strike out of those four. So, what happens while you are all are on your long break is that the Court and the attorneys go through the strikes for cause and the hardship strikes to figure out who they are going to let go because they don't appear to be impartial (or they know the defendant, plaintiff, accused, etc.) and who they are going to let go for hardship. After all of those people are decided upon, the court then says: This is our final panel of 18 that will be the jurors for which we will select peremptory strikes and the panel of four to serve as alternates after strikes.
So, let's say we have a jury panel of 60 people (that's what I had at my last jury trial). Let's say we have venire person #s 1, 6, and 8 struck for cause and/or hardship. Anyone with a juror number over 25 has no chance of sitting on that jury -- they are not even being considered -- we have effectively (or ineffectively) wasted your time.
With that background, I doubt you were struck for cause. My guess is you had a high juror number and did not have much of a chance to make it on the panel or you were a peremptory strike, probably by the defense.
By now you are probably thinking -- none of this answers your question. So let me give you my perspective. We ask a lot of questions that do not seem to make any sense in voir dire, but they make sense in the trial. We also ask a lot of questions to try to get an idea about how people think, how they feel, their political leanings. I want to get to know as much about you in the three questions you answer as I possibly can. I also want to know about you by the questions you don't answer. So, NRA question is relevant because it is going to give the defense counsel an idea or can help them place you into several categories, based on what we know about NRA members: 1) There is a very high likelihood you are conservative; 2) There's a very high likelihood that you are protective of your family, property, etc; 3) That you are not likely to be a "victim;" 4) That you have core sense of what you believe justice to be -- i.e. that criminals should be punished for their crimes. And fifth and probably the most important to those who study juries -- you are proud of that membership.
These are all good and valid ideals, as long as you are not on the defense in a criminal case -- then these are bad, bad ideals. Why? Because more than likely you will convict his client and in a jurisdiction in which the jury decides the punishment, you will select the harshest punishment. All of these things are against what this attorney was hired to do.
I'll stop there, if you want me to elaborate more on why these five things would make you a great prosecution juror or a bad defense juror, I'd be happy to do so. I don't do criminal work -- but the concepts are generally the same, even though I am sure the nuances of jury selection vary greatly.
