After more than six painstaking weeks, a jury of six men and six women was selected Monday for the months-long Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial.
The 12 jurors were seated with 11 alternates who will fill in for any jurors who cannot make it through the entire trial. They will decide the fate of 12 former educators and administrators charged in a racketeering indictment that accuses them of conspiring to change test scores on federally mandated curriculum tests.
The trial begins in earnest next Monday, with opening statements that could last several hours.
“We’re very, very pleased,” said defense attorney Benjamin Davis, who represents former administrator Tamara Cotman. “We think this is a great jury. There’s a lot of diversity.”
The dozen jurors are: one Asian-American woman, one Hispanic woman, four white men, one white women, three black women and two black men.
Among the jurors is a software engineering manager who has lived in the U.S. for 20 years and speaks English as her second language. The woman said she understood about 80 percent of the racketeering indictment, which was read to prospective jurors during the selection process — an ordeal that lasted more than three hours.
The woman, who has a teenager who attends a school in north Fulton, said she keeps so busy with her work she has not had time to follow the APS story.
Yet another juror, who hardly follows the news, said she has a nephew who was falsely accused in Newton County and imprisoned.
In her juror questionnaire, the woman wrote that she didn’t think African-Americans can get a fair trial. During individual questioning, she said money buys justice in America. “Some person who is guilty, if he has a good lawyer and presents a good case, it will get him off,” she said.
Another woman, who has a master’s degree in public health, is a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During questioning, when asked if defendants are innocent until proven guilty, she said “that’s the process.”
When asked if she was comfortable with the prospect of being a juror, the woman gave an answer that was repeated throughout the selection process: “My concern is it’s going to be a long case.”
The jury also includes a photographer, a movie theater manager and a retired custodian from the Fulton County schools system whose cousin is a detective.
It took more than two hours Monday for prosecutors and defense attorneys to go through the selection process. All the while, about 100 prospective jurors sat packed together in the ceremonial courtroom waiting to find out if their lives were about to be completely disrupted.
After the 12 jurors and 11 alternates were called and seated in the jury box, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter turned to those who were not chosen. He thanked them for their service, which included several trips to the courthouse and having to call in almost every night to see if they needed to come in the next day.
“I know it’s been difficult and hard,” Baxter said of the process, which began Aug. 11. “It’s been appreciated.”
When Baxter excused them from further duty, saying they were free to go, they erupted into applause. There was no applause from the jury box. The remaining 23, most of them grim-faced, sat in silence.
Baxter then told those jurors they will work Mondays through Thursdays, with Fridays and weekends off, and to expect long days of testimony until the trial is finished. He told them they will get a week off for Thanksgiving and, if necessary, two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s.
He also implored them to be on time and to get flu shots. “We can’t afford to get sick,” the judge said. “We can’t afford to make each other sick.”
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