CENTENNIAL — They asked about fairness, about setting aside bias and purging assumption and not just hearing but listening.
They asked about punishment. They asked about mercy. But mostly what they asked about was this: Can you weigh the life of one against the deaths of 12?
The second phase of jury selection for the Aurora movie theater shooting trial opened Wednesday with prosecutors and defense attorneys asking prospective jurors to look within themselves for the answer. The questions delved into the jurors’ views on morality and justice. There was discussion about the death penalty and mental illness. There was a Star Trek reference.
And, when it had finished for the day nine hours after it began, the judge and attorneys on both sides had found seven jurors of the 12 questioned who met the standard for moving onto the next phase of jury selection — a far higher rate than had been anticipated.
“If we continue to do this,” Judge Carlos Samour said at the day’s close, “we’re going to be way ahead of schedule.”
During interrogations lasting as long as an hour, attorneys on both sides focused much of their questioning on the punishment that James Holmes could receive for the July 2012 attack that killed 12 and wounded 70 others. Comparatively little attention was focused on the not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea that Holmes has lodged.
Questions from defense attorneys focused almost exclusively on capital punishment, and multiple times the attorneys asked some version of the question: “Do you understand that the law in Colorado never requires a death sentence?” Prosecutors, meanwhile, frequently gestured to where Holmes sat — about 20 feet from the prospective juror being questioned — and asked whether that juror would be able to impose a death sentence “for this man right over here.”
No juror during questioning said he or she would automatically impose a death sentence if the defendant was found guilty of first degree murder. The law requires jurors to consider several mitigating factors before reaching such a decision, and several professed an ambivalence toward the death penalty.
“I think it has to be the exception to the rule rather than the rule,” one juror, a woman who is a lawyer and runs a business, said.
“I believe I can,” another juror answered when asked whether she could sentence someone to death.
Believe? the prosecutors questioning her asked.
“Yes, I can. My belief is that, yes, I can do that.”
The group of jurors questioned Wednesday was made up of seven women and five men. One juror was released from jury service after questioning because of a medical issue, and another was released because she cares for her grandchildren on weekdays. A third was released because she had trouble understanding English.
The remaining two jurors who were released said they would not be able to set aside their biases when deciding the case — including one, a recent college student, for whom a prosecutor used the character Spock from Star Trek as an example in a question about morality.
“Fair and impartial”
The jurors approved to move on to the next phase of questioning were notable for their insistence that they could be fair — despite whatever preconceptions they brought into the courtroom or whatever they learned about the case in the media.
The first juror questioned, a young woman who recently graduated from college, said she had friends who knew one of the victims of the shooting. She said she had seen memorial tributes to AJ Boik on Facebook but said she wouldn’t let that affect her judgment.
“I tend to be fairly neutral in general, and I have a lot of respect for the way our legal system is run,” she said.
Another said she doesn’t pay much attention to the news media.
“I feel like I’m a very fair and impartial person,” she said.
Even jurors who expressed some predispositions were kept in the jury pool after insisting they could be fair and follow the law.
One juror said during questioning that he would likely give little weight to mitigating factors like age, mental health or family background when deciding whether to impose the death penalty. The defense moved to have the juror released, but Samour refused, noting that the man said during later questioning that he could follow the law and carefully consider such mitigating factors.
“I gave this prospective juror every out I could,” Samour said.
Opening statements in the case are expected to start in late May or early June.
They could be moved up, though, if jury selection moves faster than planned.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johningold
