Attorneys working to choose from among a predominantly female jury poolUpdated: 3:52 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014 | Posted: 8:52 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014
By Stephanie Brown
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The new group of 30 sworn in comes from a second group of 100 jurors that were called to the Courthouse today to be screened to potentially serve on the jury for the trial of Michael Dunn. That’s in addition to the 100 person jury pool that was screened Monday. Between a mix of people screened yesterday and this morning, all parties have agreed on a 62 person pool.
Judge Russell Healey told the pool he expects jury selection will go in to Wednesday. He says the trial could begin as early as Wednesday afternoon or Thursday. Healey says his role now takes more of a back seat in selection, as attorneys use a limited number of “strikes” to eliminate jurors for any reason they choose or petition to eliminate for a certain cause. Those claiming potential hardship based on the sequestration of the jury, or those claiming to have an opinion already formed on the case have already been screened.
A total 45 people have been excused heading in to this final phase of seating the 12 juror and 4 alternate panel. Individual questioning is getting underway to whittle the 62 person pool down to 16.
The jurors filled out questionnaires covering some basic information including how long they’ve lived in Duval, they’re job, if they have children and if they or someone close to them has been the victim of a crime or accused of a crime. The pool is predominantly women, with only about 14 men. Otherwise there is a wide mix of age, profession, marital status, etc. Further details are expected to emerge along with questioning coming the rest of Tuesday and into Wednesday.
It is unclear how many of the initial 130 jurors screened were male and female because many were eliminated after filling out their first questionnaire so I never saw them or heard their voice to determine how many were eliminated.
Another focus of Tuesday was the continued fight by several media outlets for more access to the courtroom. Per an agreement reached by a media committee tasked with planning for all the audio and visual questions for this trial, the media were to be put in a separate overflow room during jury selection and only provided an audio feed which is not recordable. During the trial, both audio and visual streams are available and recordable, and there is a certain number of seats allotted for media use in the courtroom.
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