But the ritual of choosing the jury got off to a slow start as more than half of the first group of 96 potential jurors raised their hands to say they could not be fair to Mr. Trump, demonstrating the challenges of picking an impartial panel in a city where the defendant is widely loathed. The judge immediately excused them.
They aren’t booting people for being aware of him — any American with a functional brain is.
They are dismissing people who say they won’t be fair to him. It’s possible to like or dislike somebody and still decide a case based on the facts of the matter. I believe the E Jean Carrol case had jurors who had voted for Trump, and they found him liable all the same.
Fair. I’m mostly poking fun at the fact that, at least in my experience, there are exceptionally few people who have had anything approaching a neutral stance about Trump since 2016. The article noted “the challenges of picking an impartial panel in a city where the defendant is widely loathed”.
So they will end up with liar Trump supporters being chosen saying they can be impartial.
It’s a possibility. What will happen later in the selection process is that the lawyers for both sides will ask additional questions of potential jurors, and see if they can find reason to believe they might be biased. They’ll get to toss out anybody were they can show bias, and a remove some number of jurors because they just feel like it. Eventually, there will be 12 jurors and a few alternates chosen.