The long-awaited trial of George Huguely for the murder of fellow UVA lacrosse player Yeardley Love began in Charlottesville Circuit Court on Monday, February 6. The first item of business, of course, is always to select a jury. Judge Ted Hogshire had allowed a fairly detailed jury questionnaire, and so when they actually got to questioning jurors, the lawyers knew a lot and had a lot of basis for questioning on the important issues. The court had decided to call 40 jurors in the morning and 40 more in the afternoon, with another two pools of 40 scheduled for Tuesday. I was able to watch some of it, but because they kept going with jury selection until after 8 PM, I have to rely on news reports. The latest report was that they actually made it through only the first pool of 40, and that they were able to qualify 19 while striking 21. A felony jury is 12 people; there will be three alternates in case people get sick or have to drop out. Normally each side gets 4 peremptory challenges — 4 times that that party can strike someone just because he or she doesn’t like something about that person. Here, where they will be selecting 15, the judge has given each side two additional strikes, for a total of 6 per side. That means that the judge needs to find 27 people for whom there is no basis for a challenge for cause — no obvious bias. They have 19; on a purely statistical basis, that would suggest that they could be done by lunch time Tuesday. But these things take on a rhythm, and my guess is that the rhythm — which had been slower earlier in the day — picked up as the day turned into night. It will probably slow back down again in the morning.
I was struck in looking at the voir dire at the fact that the judge was allowing the lawyers a lot of leeway — a lot more than we usually see. But then, in the usual case you have not had a drumbeat of sensationalist publicity for 21 months. In the usual case there have not been marches with 20,000 people being asked to wear ribbons to honor the memory of the victim. Judge Hogshire is a good judge, and he has been a judge for about 12 years. The lawyers are all experienced. They are thorough, perhaps even tedious in their questioning. And they have the questionnaire to give them more information.
In the usual case, the lawyers rarely know enough about each juror to be sure of how to exercise the peremptories. In the usual case in Charlottesville, I find that I know a fair amount about half of the jurors. I recently had a jury trial where I knew some of the members of the jury panel quite well, but there are still another half of the panel that I have to guess at when I make the peremptory challenges. But that is nothing compared to the research that both sides have no doubt done on these prospective jurors. You can be sure that both sides have run all of the jurors through Google, and Facebook, and other social media sites. They have driven by their houses, looking to see what kinds of bumper stickers are on their cars. They will have investigated the information provided on the questionnaires. When they have to make their peremptory challenges, they won’t be operating in the dark.
It is possible that the trial could start — at least with opening statements — by tomorrow afternoon. Voir dire is pretty boring, but once the openings begin, and the testimony starts, it will probably be a pretty interesting trial.
To see WVIR’s coverage — see here.
