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COMMENTARY, NO BYLINE

I heard today that one of the prosecutors working on the #theatershooting trial is so afraid of being recognized once things get heated, that he’s growing a beard. The prospective jurors were really worried about notoriety too. The judge, whose name is Carlos Samour, assured the jury during selection that he would see to it that all 24 jurors would be able to park in an enclosed parking lot and would be escorted to and from the courthouse from their cars. They will not be sequestered, so that means they’re especially concerned, they say, about the media finding them.

I can assure you, I will not be camping out on any juror’s doorstep. And I expect that the tabloids will not either. I don’t think they’ll have anything compelling to say until after they’ve decided on guilt/innocence and sentencing. There’s also the fact that if we contact a juror during this trial, we have a good chance of losing our press badges. It’s not worth it.

I was in a courtroom during the Clara Harris trial in Houston. One of the producers working for the Bill O’Reilly show phoned a juror. The juror, rightly, told the judge about it and the entire trial came to a halt to deal with this producer. She was very young and just didn’t know. She was also horrified to go before the judge to answer to her blunder. And she was thrown out of the courtroom.

Here’s a little-known fact about the Dirty Two-Dozen. Twelve of them are alternates and twelve are the real thing. But none of them will know this until the 24 of them step into the room to deliberate. That way they will all pay attention to the trial. I would imagine that if it’s made known who the alternates are, they’ll be more likely to nod off than the regular jurors.

It has been noted that a jury which is mostly women will be “dreadful” for a prosection going for death. (There are 19 women and 5 men on this panel.) But I’m hearing that considering the heinous nature of this crime, plus the fact that there are 82 victims, the gender of the jury will not matter. I studied the courtroom monitor during voir dire. Most of the jury is middle-aged, say from 35-50 years old. They come from all walks of life. Their lives are about to change and if they are going by the rules, they will not be reading this blog or anything else related to the trial. Tunnelvision.

Quote of the day: “If I were the prosecutor, I’d be hoping for Holmes to testify.” ~~Bob Grant, former Adams County District Attorney/ prosecuted Colorado’s last death penalty case which ended in lethal injection–Gary Lee Davis, 1997