Six men and six women — five of them white and seven of them African Americans — have been picked as jurors to hear the retrial of suspended DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis, who is accused of using the power of his office to strong-arm vendors for campaign contributions.
All four alternates are women.
The jury seated today is very different from the all-female panel that couldn’t agree last fall whether to convict or acquit him after 11 days of testimony, which forced the retrial.
The 12-person jury and four alternates were selected from a pool of 43 people, using a "silent strike" method. Both the prosecution and the defense quizzed about 120 DeKalb residents called for jury duty this week about their biases and hardships in an effort to seat a panel that can be fair to each side.
Then on Friday morning, the each side made one strike at a time from a list a jury clerk passed back and forth between prosecutors and Ellis’ attorneys.
Lawyers will deliver opening statements Tuesday and then the prosecution will begin calling witnesses to the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Courtney Johnson. The judge and the lawyers have predicted the trial could take four to six weeks.
Ellis, who has been suspended from office since July 2013, is fighting charges that he threatened county contractors in an effort to obtain contributions for his 2012 re-election campaign.
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