In a departure from Florida SOP court rules, which allow photography of jurors, the six women who will make up George Zimmerman’s 2nd degree-murder trial jury and the two male and two female alternate jurors will remain nameless, faceless and sequestered for the estimated two-to-four week duration of the trial.
George Zimmerman Jury Selected: All Women Jurors Chosen In Trial Of Trayvon Martin Killer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/george-zimmerman-jury-_n_3474181.html
As much public interest as there is in this case, it is far from being the most high-profile of trials in Florida, and considering that state’s very liberal policy allowing jurors to be photographed and shown on TV, the trial judge’s ruling for the jury to be anonymous and sequestered probably says more about the high emotion and potential for violent repercussion than it does about the saturation of media coverage.
While being separated from their families and isolated from normal everyday life isn’t a great situation for even a few days, at least the two to four weeks of sequestration these jurors and alternates face pales in comparison to the more than nine months the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial jurors endured.
Those jurors’ ordeal and the headaches they created for the Simpson court are detailed in Chapter 8, “Who’s to Judge?”, of Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which is now available in e-format at:
- http://press.umsystem.edu/product/Anatomy-of-a-trial,1229.aspx
- http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/anatomy-of-a-trial-jerrianne-hayslett/1112502513?ean=9780826218223 (Nook version currently $10.50 off the regular price)
- http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Trial-Lessons-Learned-Simpson/dp/0826218229/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371829936&sr=1-4&keywords=Anatomy+of+a+Trial (Kindle version currently $13.78 off the regular price)
It will be interesting to see how this trial turns out and how the jurors copy.
Anatomy of a Trial blog 