Jury Selection Reaches Final Stages in Trayvon Martin Murder Case
|
Version 0 of 1. SANFORD, Fla. — The mother whose 18-year-old “lives in a hoodie” was in. So was the young man who said he paid little attention to the story of the shooting but remembers first hearing about it while doing a one-arm pull-up at the gym. The woman who believed “the more guns the better” was out. So was the bearded guitarist who claimed to have no opinion on the case — until the judge confronted him for writing a Facebook posting suggesting the local police department was not just corrupt, but in need of an enema. After eight days in which 40 potential jurors have been culled from a sea of hundreds, a final jury of six people is on the verge of being seated in the second-degree murder trial of George Zimmerman, the volunteer community watchman who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, 16 months ago. Mr. Martin was wearing a hoodie against a steady drizzle and was walking back to the home in the modest gated community where he was staying when he encountered Mr. Zimmerman, who is Hispanic. His death turned him into a national symbol of injustice for some, with civil rights leaders leading marches demanding that Mr. Zimmerman, who claimed self-defense, be arrested, demonstrators wearing hoodies and even President Obama weighing in. After a public outcry Mr. Zimmerman was eventually arrested, 44 days after the shooting. That a local jury is poised to be seated is considered a feat in this polarizing case, widely described as the biggest trial in the history of this small city one hour’s drive north of Walt Disney World. There were predictions that the selection process could stretch three or more weeks, with summonses being sent to 500 potential jurors, all from here in Seminole County, where the shooting took place. The media saturation raised speculation that the trial might have to be moved or its jurors imported from elsewhere, which was done two years ago one county over, in the trial of Casey Anthony, the Orlando woman accused of murdering her toddler. But the national coverage devoted to the Zimmerman case may have made importing a jury moot. The judge, Debra S. Nelson, seemed intent on keeping the trial and its jurors local, instituting an exacting selection process. Pretrial questionnaires, which have yet to be made public, winnowed the pool. Individual questioning followed in the courtroom to gauge each would-be juror’s exposure to and opinions on the case. Once past that, a pool of 40 was arrived at, from which 6 jurors and 4 alternates will almost certainly be chosen. On Wednesday, as both Mr. Zimmerman’s and Mr. Martin’s parents looked on, the lead prosecutor, Bernie de la Rionda, questioned the potential jurors as a group, asking how long they had lived in Seminole County, whether they had ever been arrested or the victim of a crime and whether they owned guns. Defense lawyers will question them Thursday, and opening statements are predicted for next week. Twenty-seven of the 40 are white, making the group more diverse, proportionally, than Seminole County, where four out of five residents are white. In Sanford, 57 percent of residents identify as white. The degree of vetting is rare, and usually reserved for high-profile cases like this one, legal experts say. “It’s extremely uncommon, and it’s proving to be very effective,” said Mark E. NeJame, a defense lawyer based in Orlando who has represented Tiger Woods and Ms. Anthony’s parents and is a legal analyst for several television networks. Early on, he said, he was asked to take the Zimmerman case but declined. Also unusual are the attributes that the prosecution and defense are likely to be seeking in jurors. Conservative-leaning jurors who favor law enforcement are generally what prosecutors seek, while the defense often looks for those who skew liberal. But not in this case, which is testing Mr. Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense and spotlighting Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. That law has not been invoked in this case, but was cited by the Sanford police as the reason officers did not initially arrest Mr. Zimmerman. “It is a strange, bizarre case in that the prosecution is not looking for a typical prosecution-oriented jury — which is more conservative, more law and order, more gun rights, maybe more Republican,” said Mark O’Mara, Mr. Zimmerman’s lead defense lawyer. “Those are sort of the types of jurors that I’m looking to.” The individual questioning offered a glimpse into just how little some residents knew, or claimed to know, about perhaps the biggest news story in their county’s history. One young man said he largely ignored current events outside of his Facebook feed, and then had to explain to the prosecutor, Mr. de la Rionda, what a news feed was. “It’s bad I don’t really pay attention to the news,” a prospective juror said. Another woman said she checked a local TV channel only to get the temperature. This lack of awareness was discomfiting to some — “I think some people were being absolutely honest, and it’s horrifying,” said Diana Tennis, a lawyer and legal commentator based in Orlando — but presented a challenge to lawyers on each side. “A juror that professes complete ignorance to one of the most controversial and high-profile cases in the history of Seminole County might not be a desired juror,” said Kendall Coffey, a Miami-based lawyer and a former United States attorney. But Mr. NeJame said lack of interest in the news was not necessarily a drawback. “Some would argue that they are actually the intelligent ones,” he wrote in an e-mail, “as crimes and cases occur every day and they choose simply not to get caught up in the case du jour.” Lawyers in the case have also been on the lookout for so-called stealth jurors who play down their knowledge and withhold opinions with the aim of getting selected for their own ends, whether to influence the verdict or garner post-trial publicity. Mr. O’Mara identified one such man last week — the author of the Facebook rant excoriating the Sanford Police Department. After being dismissed, the man returned to the courthouse in an apparent attempt to enter the jury room, before sheriff’s deputies escorted him out. Judge Nelson has ruled that the jury be sequestered for the duration of the trial, projected to last two to four weeks. The jurors will remain unidentified during the trial, and their faces will not be broadcast. The judge is also considering the defense lawyers’ motion to uphold jurors’ anonymity for a six-month cooling-off period after a verdict is reached. Mr. O’Mara said one of his biggest concerns was that in arriving at its decision, the jury would be swayed by fear of reprisals, a concern that some potential jurors have voiced. But several lawyers here said that once the trial ended, retaliation or even public outcry was unlikely because the main demands of protesters had been met: that Mr. Zimmerman be arrested and get his day in court. Natalie Jackson, a lawyer who represents Mr. Martin’s family, said the small number of protesters at the courthouse suggested that public anger had not been directed at Mr. Zimmerman, but rather at the local police department. “The protests were about unequal justice,” she said. “We just want a fair and transparent process,” she said, adding, “and so far for us, it’s been fair and transparent.” <NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Lance Speere contributed reporting. |