They were quizzed on their media consumption and asked whether they marched in protests after Floyd died, and, if so, whether they carried signs.Īlthough that level of scrutiny isn’t typical in most jury trials, experts say, preemptive questionnaires have been used in prominent cases, including the Boston Marathon bombing case and the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting trial, in an attempt to weed people out. Potential jurors were asked if they had seen the video of Floyd’s death and, if so, how many times. In Chauvin’s case, the jury selection process began months before the potential jurors started answering questions in court the jury pool received an extensive 16-page questionnaire in the mail in December. “You’re looking for a fair and impartial jury, not an oblivious jury,” Medwed said. “You want people who have heard of the case but are willing to put aside any preexisting biases or any initial opinions about guilt or innocence.”īut knowledge of the case is not a dealbreaker, experts said. Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University. “Unless you’re living under a rock, there’s no one in Minneapolis, and probably no one in the United States, who’s not familiar with George Floyd’s death,” said Daniel S. Prospective jurors are already loaded with information about what happened, which can make it hard to find people who appear open to hearing the facts in court and changing their minds. The man said a friend showed him the video of Floyd’s death afterward, he told his wife: “It could have been me.”Ĭhoosing a jury in a high-profile case presents an unusual challenge, according to attorneys and legal experts. Juror #27 - Black man, 30sĪn immigrant who came to the United States more than a decade ago, he once lived near where Floyd was killed. She said media coverage of Chauvin depicted him as “an aggressive cop with tax problems,” which drew a laugh from the former officer’s attorney. She feels White people are favored by the justice system but strongly disagrees with defunding the police. She was “excited” to get a summons in this case, which “everyone’s heard about, everyone’s talked about and everyone’s going to talk about long after the trial is over.” Juror #92 - White woman, 40s She grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota and has an uncle who is a police officer in Brainerd, Minn. The jurors Juror #9 - Multiracial woman, 20s The juror descriptions included here have been pulled from this publicly available information. Under court order, very little information about the jurors has been made public, besides their race, gender, age range and audio of their interviews during jury selection. “There are people all over the nation, all over the world, that are looking at this to get a sense of how much they can believe in our system of justice.”īecause the case is so high-profile, the jurors were cloaked in anonymity, shielded from public view and shuttled to and from Courtroom 1856 under armed guard. “What’s happening in this trial is not just a statement or a judgment on the criminal process in Hennepin County, Minnesota,” said Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe, a law professor at University of California at Davis. Their decision will reverberate across the country, setting off renewed debates about race, policing and accountability. The jurors were charged with deciding one of the highest-profile cases in recent memory, which began last month in a downtown courtroom a few miles from where Floyd was filmed facedown on a Minneapolis street.
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