Thread by @socialistdogmom

jury selection is moving along slowly. when we were allowed into the courtroom shortly before 10am, only 69 jurors remained. a pool of 28 has been selected at random & they’ll do the majority of voir dire individually in chambers.

the only two pieces of information of note so far, in my opinion, are that the defense plans to call officer tammy shifflett as a witness — she was the officer who left her post at 4th street on august 12th, leaving it open to traffic,

and they affirmed that they intend to argue “the defendant believed he was acting in self defense.”
i was pretty sure this is where they were headed but it’s a real gut punch to hear it said aloud in court.

all of the potential jurors responded that they’ve read media coverage of the event. more than half said they already had some opinion about it. individual voir dire will probe these opinions more deeply & determine if they are able to hear the case impartially.

the defense’s motion for a change of venue is still technically under advisement. i have faith that this court will be able to seat an impartial jury. remember, you don’t have to be ignorant of the case to hear evidence - you just have to be able to set your opinion aside.

i’m going to head back to the courthouse momentarily but my ears are burning with the sound of defense counsel hill asking jurors “does anyone feel like using violence to defend yourself is never appropriate?”

jury selection is plodding along. the judge says they’re about 1/3 of the way through individual voir dire on the pool of 28. jurors outside that group have been released until 5pm, so i assume we won’t see any jurors struck until at least 5.

so we’ve got our pool of 28 being questioned individually, plus 41 jurors in the gallery ready to fill in for anyone who gets struck after individual questioning. but they’ve ALSO got a second pool of around 90 people scheduled to report tomorrow morning.

it’s going slow, but that’s ok. i still firmly believe they’re going to be able to seat a jury, probably sometime tomorrow.

we are still working on jury selection. of the 28 potential jurors, individual voir dire still has not been completed on 11. 17 have been sent home - 13 of them struck, 4 instructed to report back tomorrow.

13 new jurors were selected at random to fill out the 28 - they’ve also been sent home & will report back at 9am. the remaining pool will come back at 11am.
the 11 folks still undergoing individual voir dire will be held until it’s complete, probably 8pm.

at 7:45 the last 5 of the original 28 jurors were given a choice: go home now & come back at 9am to finish... or stick it out as long as it takes tonight & not have to come back until it’s time for peremptory strikes (possibly wednesday morning) - they all chose to stay

i can’t think of a time i bailed on the courtroom before the day was done, but i’ve been hanging around the courthouse since 8am & i’ve got a few hours of work to do tonight & the thought of my little dogs getting so lonely was tugging on my heartstrings.

they were working on the 3rd to last juror when i left & they’ve been averaging about 20 min per juror this evening. at that pace, they should be done between 9:30 & 10.
jury selection will continue tomorrow morning at 9am.

because jurors were being released for the evening upon completion of their individual voir dire, it’s difficult to say for sure how many of them were struck and how many we’ll see again. we’ll see individual voir dire start all over again with at least 15 new jurors tomorrow.

given that it took perhaps ten hours to complete the process for 28 jurors today, i think it’s safe to say we’re looking at another very full, long day of jury selection tomorrow.

ok, i'm still figuring out the best way to go about all this but i'm going to transition now to drafting the audio recap of today's events. i'm allowing myself a maximum of two hours to research & write which should come out to like 10-15 min of audio. it'll be up late tonight.