Five more jurors were qualified Wednesday to serve for the Ross Harris murder trial, bringing to 21 the number of jurors eligible to serve.
The newly qualified jurors: a Marietta homemaker who is 31 weeks pregnant; a recently licensed private investigator who once investigated homicides as a state trooper in Massachusetts; a bartender who graduated from North Cobb High School; a material handler who works as a team leader in a warehouse; and a nurse practitioner for WellStar who said she thinks Harris is guilty.
It is possible the pregnant juror could later be excused for medical reasons.
This latest round of qualifications means that jury selection is probably about half-way finished. A minimum of 30 jurors must be qualified before prosecutors and defense attorneys can use their peremptory strikes. But more qualified jurors are expected to be needed, because alternate jurors are expected to be picked for the lengthy trial. Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley has not said how many alternates she plans to use.
On Wednesday morning, Staley took a break to hear motions on the last 11 prospective jurors who had sat in the jury box and individually answered questions posed by prosecutors and defense attorneys.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense moved to strike four of these jurors, making them qualified. They also agreed that four other jurors should be struck for cause because they could not be impartial.
Harris’ lawyer, Maddox Kilgore, moved to strike the remaining three jurors for cause, saying they had said they believed Harris was guilty and could not be fair and impartial. Prosecutor Chuck Boring opposed all three of them.
Staley granted Kilgore’s motion to strike two of the prospective jurors. This included one who’d written on her questionnaire, “I know he is guilty,” but then came into court and said she could be fair and impartial. Staley called this illogical and granted the motion to strike her for cause.
Staley also granted Kilgore’s motion to strike for cause a teaching assistant from Smyrna who oversees kindergartners. This woman said she believed Harris was guilty and that she’d also told that to her husband. And during questioning, she said she’d told co-workers she didn’t expect to be picked for the jury “because I’ve already judged him.”
Staley denied Kilgore’s motion to strike the nurse practitioner from WellStar, who’d expressed some pretty strong feelings about the case.
“How does someone forget that his child is in the back seat?” she asked at one point. “I don’t recall ever having left my son in the car. I don’t get it.”
She also said, “I can follow instructions but I’m going into this with a bias.”
The woman, who has a psychology degree from the University of Michigan, also said her opinions were not so fixed that she couldn’t put them aside and decide the case on the evidence and the law, prosecutor Chuck Boring told Staley.
Staley agreed to qualify her as a prospective juror.
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