Here's why people who dislike Trump were allowed on the jury for the Trump Organization criminal trial

• Three people who dislike Trump made it onto a jury deciding a criminal case involving his company.
• Insider spoke to two experts who explained how this was possible.

Three of the twelve Manhattanites selected to sit on the jury when the Trump Organization goes on trial on tax-fraud charges said they had negative opinions of former President Donald Trump, including a man who called Trump a narcissist.

In fact, well over half of some 60 people polled as potential jurors this week said they had negative views of the former president.

Insider spoke to two experts who explained how juries are formed and how people who openly dislike Trump can still participate in deciding the fate of his company.

How juries are formed

Joseph Low is a California-based attorney who specializes in the jury-selection process, which is called voir dire.

Low told Insider that the judge will often start the jury selection process, eliminating jurors who can't serve for practical reasons such as their jobs or their health.

From there, it's down to the lawyers from both sides to ask targeted questions to narrow down the pool of potential jurors.

Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial lawyers, told Insider that a better name for jury selection would be "jury deselection." That's because juries are formed by slowly weeding out potential jurors that either side doesn't want on the jury, and the jury is formed with whoever is left.

Both sides get to excuse jurors with either a for-cause strike or a peremptory strike. For-cause strikes are limitless and used to excuse jurors who wouldn't be able to avoid being biased in the case. Each side gets a also gets a limited number of peremptory strikes that can be used to dismiss jurors for no specific reason.

Each jurisdiction differs over what constitutes a for-cause strike, Low said, but they can be somewhat hard to use. Simply saying you don't like Trump isn't enough to dismiss someone for cause. What's more important is whether a potential juror says they can put their previously held opinions to the side and judge the case based solely on the evidence shown in court. All of the jurors in the Trump Organization case, including the two men who said they disliked Trump, said they could be fair and impartial.

Since for-cause strikes are limitless, every lawyer's strategy is to try to get a juror they want eliminated excused this way. If they can't, then they need to determine whether they're worth excusing using a peremptory strike, which Low says lawyers hold onto like "gold bars."

The fact that two people who expressed negative views of Trump made it onto the jury suggests that Trump's lawyers ran out of peremptory strikes to dismiss these jurors.

Many opinions about Trump

Rahmani said it was always going to be hard for Trump's lawyers to get a completely neutral jury, since most people in the country know and have an opinion about Trump. And the fact that the case is happening in Manhattan, a liberal enclave, puts Trump at even more of a disadvantage.

"When you're in a liberal jurisdiction like Manhattan, your jury pool is gonna consist of folks who don't like former President Trump," Rahmani said.

"I absolutely believe that once the jury is picked, the case is over," Low said. "You pick the right jury, you're going to win. You don't pay attention to these things ... you're just rolling your dice. You might as well go to the craps table in Vegas. In fact, you probably get better odds there."

Low said if the Trump Organization ends up losing this case, the company's lawyers may very well blame an allegedly flawed jury selection, calling complaints over voir dire and jury instructions one the "most fruitful" ways to file and win an appeal.