CrimLaw

Sniper Malvo:

A blow by blow of the exciting process by which peremptory strikes are done in Virginia:

The final jury was culled from a pool of 28 this morning. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys were allowed to eliminate six jurors each without explanation.

Prosecutor Robert F. Horan Jr. made the first choice by marking a document with the list of jurors and their assigned numbers. Horan then handed the list to a court officer, who handed it to defense attorney Craig S. Cooley. Cooley made his selection and the court office passed the list back to Horan.

The process was repeated until all 16 jurors were chosen, which took less than 20 minutes. Before Cooley made one choice, he spoke to Malvo, who whispered something back and then Cooley marked the list with his choice.

After all was said and done this is the exact makeup of the jury. It seems to favor the Defense:

Robert J. Cleary, the lead federal prosecutor in the trial of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, said the jurors selected in Malvo's trial seemed generally favorable to the defense: "If I were the defense, I would want to have jurors with children, and preferably people who had teen-age children, to identify a little with Malvo."

A skirmish about information the government has gathered about the jury took place:

Cooley also asked Roush to order prosecutors to turn over to him the criminal background checks on members of the jury pool that prosecutors had gathered. He said the backgrounds checks gave the prosecution an unfair advantage in the final phase of jury selection.

Horan rose from his seat and indignantly dismissed Cooley's assertion, saying that the defense had their own jury selection experts "upstairs" and added that if a potential juror did have a criminal background, it would likely benefit the defense rather than the prosecution.

Roush denied that motion, too.

This seems to have risen from the prosecution's prior assertion that one of the potential jurors was a felon:

Prosecutors would not comment [about jury selection], other than to say that one potential juror who appeared to have a grand larceny conviction but failed to admit it when questioned was among those they rejected - and will be reported to authorities.