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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 355 _ Filed 10/18/21 Page4of5 Page 4 believe that counsel will be better than the Court at identifying bias, nor that counsel will be more interested than the Court in removing biased jurors. Indeed, it is unlikely that attorney-led questioning will yield a significant change in the candidness and openness of prospective jurors if the Court also limits those questions to one minute per juror, as the defense also proposes. (/d. at 14). Given that prospective jurors are likely to “respond honestly to questions directed to them by a federal judge,” Saipov, 2020 WL 958527, at *1, Court-led voir dire remains appropriate in this case. Accordingly, the Government respectfully submits that the well-established practice in this District of Court-led voir dire should be followed. Counsel can address potential bias by proposing questions for the Court to ask (as it already has) and engaging in the strike process, as is customary and appropriate here. I. Individual “Sequestered” Voir Dire Is Not Warranted The Government respectfully submits that the well-established practice in this District should be followed; that is, the Court should ask most questions in open court and ask sensitive questions, such as those that relate to sexual abuse and media exposure, at sidebar. The defendant argues that individual sequestered voir dire is necessary in light of the nature of the charges in this case, which she claims are “particularly inflammatory and of great concern to communities from which jurors are drawn,” and her concern that “a discussion of pretrial publicity in front of the entire jury pool will contaminate those few jurors who have not been subjected to the publicity.” (Dkt. No. 342 at 8-9). Of course, under the typical practice in the District, prospective jurors would not be asked to describe their experiences with sexual assault or the details of pretrial publicity in front of the rest of the venire. That questioning would happen at sidebar, in an “individual, sequestered” setting. But not every prospective juror may need additional questions on those DOJ-OGR-00005253