Conrad Murray’s jury selection and controversy begins
March 24, 2011 by admin
Filed under Publists fired as jury selection begins
The circus that will be the Michael Jackson manslaughter trial started with a rather bumpy start with Dr. Conrad Murray firing the publicity company who leaked questions to TMZ on Wednesday.
The media company hired by the defense leaked the questions even though the final questionnaire did not contain any of the questions circulating on the Internet.
“It is an embarrassment,” Ed Chernoff, Murray’s attorney, told the judge. Chernoff apologized and said the company would be fired.
After the hearing, Chernoff confirmed that the employee was Miranda Sevcik, a Houston publicist who began working for Murray and his legal team two days after Jackson’s death.
Jury selection began on Thursday to choose the 12 people who will decide if Michael Jackson’s personal doctor is guilty of involuntary manslaughter over the pop icon’s 2009 death.
It may be difficult to find jurors unfamiliar with the case which was highlighted after only two of the 160 interviewed said they had not heard anything against Conrad Murray.
Some 300 people had been randomly selected as candidates, but faced questions to ensure their impartiality as jurors for the trial. About half of the group crowded into the LA Superior Court on the first two days of jury selection, and by the end of the day about 100 had been dismissed, after proving that serving on the case would cause them financial hardship.
‘Real live cases are not scripted episodes of TV shows,’ the judge warned the potential jurors. Those not rejected on Thursday or Friday get a 27-page questionnaire to further test their eligibility. Lawyers for both sides will then quiz the potential jurors from May 4, to choose a final panel of 12 jurors and six alternates.
