“Loud Music” Murder Trial: Jury Selection Completed, Trial To Begin Tomorrow
10 women, 6 men empaneled as jury, trial begins tomorrow at Noonrop
A jury of 10 women and 6 men were chosen today for the first degree murder trial of 47-year-old Michael Dunn, charged in the shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. Twelve of these sixteen will sit as primary jurors, and another four as alternates, but it was not yet clear as of this writing which jurors would be placed in which group.
Unlike the case in the Zimmerman trial, jury selection was not televised. Local reporters were finally granted a video feed into the selection proceedings yesterday afternoon, continuing through today, but this feed was not made available for real-time broadcast.
Because of the lack of broadcast video and audio, most of the information regarding the selection process became publicly known only through the tweets of reporters on the scene. Accordingly, the kind of rich detail and insight available regarding the jurors in the Zimmerman trial is not readily accessible here, at least not until local reporters incorporate such details into their coverage of the selection process.
Beginning with the trial proper tomorrow, scheduled to begin at Noon, it is expected that a live audio and video feed will be broadcast from the court room, albeit juror identities will remain concealed. We’ll be covering the trial in real time, as we did in the Zimmerman trial.
Interestingly, it appears that State Prosecutor Angela Corey will take the lead for the entirety of this trial. It was Corey who led the State’s portion of voir dire over the past two days. Assistant State Attorney John Guy, familiar from the Zimmerman trial, has played a substantive role in pre-trial procedures, but appears to have been allocated the back seat in this prosecution.
State Attorney Angela Corey
The 16 selected jurors are being released to go home this evening. They return to court at 8AM tomorrow, after which they will remain sequestered for the duration of the trial, although they will be allowed visitors this Sunday if the trial has not yet concluded by then. Holding court on Saturday was an option explicitly raised by Judge Healey at the close of today, although a decision has not yet been made.
In separate news, State prosecutors have said that when the contentious jailhouse recordings are finally released to the media, they will be redacted of various racist statements alleged to have been made by Dunn. Why such comments would fall under any exception to Florida’s public records law is utterly unclear, as they do not involve privacy or confidential information. Further complaints from the media on this point are to be anticipated.
Keep your eyes here at Legal Insurrection for more details as they develop.
Andrew F. Branca is an MA lawyer and the author of the seminal book “The Law of Self Defense, 2nd Edition,” available at the Law of Self Defense blog, Amazon.com (paperback and Kindle), Barnes & Noble (paperback and Nook), and elsewhere.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I am not surprised the Sea Hag is taking this one. It is an easy notch in her holster.
She is still stinging about losing Zimmerman.
My thoughts exactly.
Sea Hag …. LOL …. love it.
Actually, she’s always resembled to me more of a cross between a pig and a toad: aggressive, gluttonous ignorance personified.
Yes, Corey needs a win to sooth the sting of the Zimmerman fiasco.
Whatever case Dunn might have had for self defense was seriously damaged by his following actions: leaving the scene and the racist statements over a jail phone.
He didn’t know the jail phone calls were taped? Has he never seen a freakin’ cop show on TV?
Forensic photos show a minimum of 6 shots fired.
http://is.gd/QouVxt
Were there more?
The photos show nine; three from about 2 o’clock, three from about 3 o’clock, and three from maybe 5 o’clock (one of which wouldn’t be visible if the quarter window glass hadn’t remained intact).
Andrew covered this in the previous thread:
“Four people were hit, but Dunn fired a LOT more than four rounds, from many angles, all down the length of Davis’ SUV–almost as damning as the pizza. See forensics photos at my blog, here:
http://is.gd/QouVxt
–Andrew, @LawSelfDefense”
I haven’t seen those photos before. It looks like he kept firing as the teenagers tried to get away from him. IMO, not good for his claim that they had a weapon.
Andrew
One never knows about juries. Acquittal is always possible when the accused is represented by skilled defense counsel. One need only look at the Casey Anthony case.
To this day, I remain stunned that Dick DeGuerin convinced a jury to acquit Robert Durst. Durst was accused in a Texas murder, years after his wife disappeared under unexplained circumstances.
Let’s see what kind of narrative of innocence Defense Counsel comes up with, and the skill with which they challenge the prosecutions narrative.
ANy live TV on this case ? CourtTV went away years ago, became ‘TrueTV’ BS.
TV or web stream URL ?
tks.
I wonder if George will be watching this trial.