Opinionated New Yorkers complicate Trump jury selection
By Kayla Epstein, Madeline Halpert & Nada Tawfik
A 40-year-old New Yorker did not expect to report to jury duty this week and come face to face with Donald Trump.
Yet he found himself in the first batch of 96 prospective jurors for the former US president’s historic criminal trial.
He breezily answered the first few screening questions: what he did for a living (finance), what he did in his free time (golf), which podcasts he enjoyed (Barstool Sports).
But the biggest question of all stopped him short: Could you judge the defendant impartially?
He said he spent a lot of time with Republicans, and was raised in Texas, a state that skews conservative.
He told the courtroom he felt he might have “unconscious bias”.
It might be hard to be impartial, he told Justice Juan Merchan, who swiftly dismissed him.
Speaking to the BBC outside court, the man, who asked us not to use his name so as to protect his privacy, said he felt it was “going to be tough” to find an impartial jury in New York.
