Jury to be selected Monday for APS trial

Twenty-three Fulton County residents will learn Monday if their lives are about to be turned upside down — whether they must spend the next three to six months as jurors in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial.

Twelve will be picked as regular jurors and 11 will be picked as alternates should any of the original dozen be unable to make it through the ordeal. Opening statements are scheduled for Sept. 29, kicking off the trial in earnest.

It has taken six weeks to get to this point. Three administrators, a principal, an assistant principal, five teachers and two testing coordinators are charged in a racketeering indictment of conspiring to change students' answers on federally mandated curriculum tests.

In all, 600 Fulton residents were summoned to court to fill out lengthy questionnaires and be questioned by prosecutors and defense attorneys. During an initial stage of selection, many were excused for various hardship reasons.

The remaining 225 or so prospective jurors then had to have the 71-page indictment read to them. In a sign of how unwieldy the case is, these jurors were told to assemble across the street in the large Fulton County Commission hall, where they sat and listened for more than three and a half hours as prosecutors Clint Rucker and Fani Willis took turns reading the indictment. When Willis finally finished, the jurors broke out into applause.

Individual questioning followed, a process that ended Thursday. All that is left now is for the 103 qualified jurors to return Monday and learn their fate.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys each have 24 strikes to pick the 12-person jury and 11 strikes to select the alternate jurors. For this reason, only 93 prospective jurors are needed, but Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter qualified an additional 10 in case some fail to show up on Monday. This has been a persistent problem throughout the lengthy process.

Baxter initially excused hourly wage earners if they said being away from their jobs for an extended period would be a crushing financial hardship. Many said they could not get by on the $25 a day Fulton pays for jury service.

Defense attorneys objected. Allowing only salaried workers to serve, they said, would deny the dozen educators on trial the chance to pick jurors from a fair cross section of the community. Baxter initially overruled those objections, saying he was not going to make someone lose their home for having to sit on a months-long case.

Midway through the selection process, however, Baxter reversed course. He said he had researched the issue and believed he had the authority to order companies to continue paying those picked for duty.

Then, in the legal equivalent of a game of chicken, Baxter told defense attorneys he would call back the dozens of jurors he had previously excused for financial hardship and allow them to be individually questioned to see if they were qualified to serve. This could add another two weeks to the selection process, he noted.

If any of the 12 defendants are convicted, Baxter noted, an appeals court could later order a new trial because he incorrectly excused jurors for financial hardships.