Wish to serve sped e≠ort

The judge had worried that the size of the shooting case and the vast media coverage would drag out the process.

centennial» As the final day of jury selection for the Aurora movie theater shooting trial dragged into the evening hours last week, Judge Carlos Samour Jr. flashed an apologetic smile to the potential jurors who still filled his courtroom.

“Do you see now why they never show jury selection on ‘Law & Order’?” he joked.

Despite the late hours, though, picking a jury for the trial went far faster and easier than expected.

Samour had summoned 9,000 jurors and scheduled the selection process to last until June. Instead, he needed barely more than 1,000 jurors, and the process finished a month and a half ahead of schedule. All of the jurors in the final panel came from the first three days’ worth of summonses.

In the end, Samour’s summoning of perhaps the largest jury pool in U.S. history proved to be overly cautious.

“A lot of high-profile cases,” said Greg Hurley, an analyst at the National Center for State Courts, “they’re able to pick a jury from 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 jurors.”

Samour worried that the size of the theater shooting case, the amount of media coverage it had received and the length of the trial would make it the exception. A statistical analysis prepared for the defense team gave further reason for caution.

Of the thousands of jurors who responded to their summonses and filled out questionnaires in the first phase of the selection process, 95 percent said they had seen media reports about the shooting and 68 percent said they had already decided that James Holmes is guilty. Nearly a third said they believed Holmes deserves the death penalty.

“The questionnaires reveal that the residents of Arapahoe County are deeply saturated not only with detailed knowledge and opinions, but bias concerning this case,” defense attorneys wrote in one motion asking to move the trial to a different county.

But the jurors who made it into the second phase of jury selection — when attorneys questioned jurors individually — routinely said they would set aside their biases and preconceptions in order to serve. Rath-

er than taking the easy way out of jury duty that could last until September, jurors time and again put themselves in the position of being selected.

Jurors said they would wake up early, stay up late or work on the weekends to keep up with their jobs while also serving on the jury. Others said they were willing to scrape by on limited income during the trial.

One juror agreed to schedule her honeymoon around the trial. During individual questioning, another juror said she had already hired a college student to drive her daughter to and from after-school activities, in anticipation of being picked. Those two jurors were ultimately not selected.

Many told Samour that, because of the tri- al’s magnitude, they felt a duty to serve the community impartially. “If not me, then who?” was a frequent response, Samour noted.

“The law takes precedent over my own personal opinions in this instance,” said one juror, who also wasn’t picked.

Some jurors even seemed intrigued by the possibility of serving — so much so that a defense attorney asked jurors during the final stage of questioning whether any of them hoped to capitalize on the attention surrounding the case. When one juror — among the last to be dismissed — was asked what he thought when he received his summons, he replied, “I thought this would be an interesting opportunity.”

The defense’s statistical analysis of juror questionnaires also bore out this trend.

Of those who wrote on their questionnaires that they believed Holmes is guilty, 49 percent said they could set that opinion aside and afford him a presumption of innocence at trial. Sixty-one percent of jurors said they would ignore what they learned about the case from news reports when deciding a verdict.

Legal scholars often cast doubt on jurors’ assurances they can set aside preconceptions. Even the most disciplined jurors have trouble shaking bias. And Holmes’ attorneys made clear after a final jury was selected Tuesday that they remain concerned many jurors have prejudged the case.

But Samour said near the end of jury selection that he was heartened by the summoned jurors’ sense of duty.

“Jury service is not something we do because it’s easy,” he told the remaining jurors before beginning the selection process’ final phase. “It’s something we do because we deeply treasure our democracy.”

Even still, Hurley, with the National Center for State Courts, said it would be a mistake to think that jury selection for the theater shooting case was easy.

“They still had to call an awful lot of people,” he said, “even though it wasn’t as many as they anticipated.”