Two More Days of Jury Questioning Remain

Well, another week in court completed. Two more days of jury questioning to go next week and then we select our jury.

Today 17 jurors were scheduled for questioning, but one juror forgot to come in and was rescheduled for Monday morning. Of the 16 jurors we questioned, 4 jurors were passed for cause. Six jurors were excused for being an unable to consider the death penalty, one juror was excused for believing that only the death penalty could be considered, two jurors were excused for medical reasons, one juror was excused due to her sister's death this week, another juror was excused because her son was shot last week, and one juror was excused because he said any evidence of gang membership would cause him to vote guilty no matter what the evidence.

So today four of the prospective jurors were passed for cause and return on October 8, 2009 for the final jury selection process. After 13 days of general questioning, 59 jurors have been cleared for cause (out of 203 jurors). There are two days and 33 jurors left in the scheduled jury questioning process. There is no jury selection today but the trial is in session at 9:00 on master calendar, Dept. 24, Judge Stephen Hall, for another Pitchess discovery motion for the personnel files of two EPAPD officers. The trial resumes before Judge Parsons on Monday, October 5, 2009 with questioning of a new group of 17 jurors.

Judge Parsons decided at the end of the afternoon that we will complete the two remaining days of juror questioning and as planned on Thursday morning, October 8, 2009, attempt to select a jury plus five alternate jurors out of the pool of jurors we have. If we are successful, then the opening statements will be Tuesday morning, October 13, 2009 9:00. If we run out of jurors before getting the 12 main jury members and five alternates, then we will immediately start further selection on a much smaller number of prospective jurors. The jurors selected on October 8 will remain selected; we do not start completely over. If this occurs, it is hoped that the delay in opening statements and the start of evidence will not be more than a day or two, or at most until Monday, October 19, 2009. We will not know the answer until we see how things go next Thursday morning.

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