Jury selection in newspaper shooting trial set
Attorneys say 300 people in pool to decide fate of Capital Gazette attack suspect is unprecedented for Anne Arundel
Three hundred prospective jurors will descend Friday on the Anne Arundel County courthouse to complete questionnaires, the first step in a lengthy jury selection process Judge Laura Ripken announced Tuesday for the Capital Gazette shooting trial.
Experienced defense attorneys told The Capital both the size of the jury pool and the process ordered by Ripken — who is presiding over the trial of the man charged with fatally shooting Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters — are unprecedented in Anne Arundel County.
Ripken heard arguments Tuesday from prosecutors and the public defenders representing 39-year-old Jarrod Ramos about what questions are appropriate to include in this preliminary questionnaire, which is itself unique. Ramos faces five counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, and six counts of first-degree assault among other charges.
“It’s a highly unusual set of circumstances to have prospective jurors given a questionnaire of this nature,” said Peter O’Neill, a veteran defense attorney based in Glen Burnie. “[It’s] really reflective that you’re dealing with probably the most horrific murder case that we’ve had in Anne Arundel County.”
Tuesday’s hearing in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court was the latest in a series of meetings leading up to the start of the trial in November. Attorneys on both sides have exchanged drafts of questionnaires.
Their questions probe prospective jurors’ knowledge of the case based on media coverage and whether they knew any of the attorneys or victims, among other basic questions. Prosecutors and defense attorneys disagreed on their respective drafts of a narrative summarizing facts of the case to precede the list of questions.
Ramos’ attorneys demanded their client’s plea of not criminally responsible, Maryland’s version of the insanity defense, be included in the narrative. Prosecutors disagreed, arguing Ramos could at any point up to the trial withdraw his plea.
Ripken said during the hearing in Annapolis that the questionnaire should be limited to simple questions. She told prosecutors and defense attorneys she’d heard their arguments and read their drafts and would create a questionnaire, which would be emailed to the attorneys Thursday. It will be handed out to 300 prospective jurors Friday — 150 in the morning, 150 in the afternoon — and returned that day.
“At the end of the day,” O’Neill said, “they’re trying to gather as much pertinent data on any prospective juror so that they can make the most well-informed determination as to the selection of an individual.”
More specific questions dealing with opinion and biases will be asked at the in-person jury selection process scheduled to occur over three days from Oct. 30 through Nov. 1.
‘Devising a system’
Ripken said 50 prospective jurors at a time would be called into Courtroom 4C — the largest in the courthouse — each morning and afternoon over the three days of jury selection. Ripken will read aloud questions discussed by both sets of attorneys. If potential jurors respond affirmatively, they will be told to stand and say their juror number. Attorneys will take notes on jurors’ responses.
After Ripken reads through the list of questions and attorneys have taken notes, prosecutors, the defense attorneys and Ramos will be dismissed and go to a smaller courtroom down the hallway.
Then, jurors will be called into the room one at a time to determine why they responded to certain questions. This process normally is completed at the bench, with white noise playing over courtroom speakers to keep the conversation between the judge, attorneys and prospective juror private. The process as Ripken set it will prevent all the attorneys from crowding around the bench for three days.
Prospective jurors will be eliminated for various reasons during this part of the process, and Ripken said it would be repeated until there is a pool of 100. At that point both sides will move back to the larger courtroom and select the jury panel of 12 and a number of alternates.
In cases such as Ramos’, where there’s a possibility of a sentence of life in prison, the defense is afforded 20 strikes to dismiss jurors without a challenge, while prosecutors get 10, according to Maryland law.
“It sounds like a very well thought out plan for going through this process in a methodical fashion,” O’Neill said. “The court should be complimented for devising a system to get through this efficiently.”
‘Who hasn’t heard?’
John Robinson, a veteran criminal defense attorney based in Glen Burnie, said it will be nearly impossible for attorneys to find jurors who haven’t heard about the case. He said he remembered seeing the news on June 28, 2018, on television when he was in Italy.
“Who hasn’t heard about this case? No one.”
“The question is whether you can find someone who can set aside pretrial publicity and preconceived notions and decide the case solely and exclusively based on evidence presented in court,” Robinson said. “That’s why they have 300 people.”
O’Neill said the attorneys are likely to probe prospective jurors who indicated they’d heard about the case about what they heard, where they heard it — online media, newspapers, television.
Both attorneys said it is critically important for prospective jurors to have the opportunity to explain their answers to questions away from their peers, especially considering the nature of some questions are personal.
O’Neill said it’s common for the judge to ask potential jurors if they’ve been a victim of a violent crime or know somebody that has been. “You can imagine there’s going to be a flood of emotion from those individuals that are being questioned.”
“You want painfully honest answers,” Robinson said. “You don’t want a stealth juror.”
The Capital is owned by Baltimore Sun Media.