Jury selection starts in George Zimmerman's Florida trial for killing Trayvon Martin
The murder trial of George Zimmerman, the Florida man accused of shooting unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, failed to choose a single juror on its first day of jury selection.
Lawyers reviewed questionnaire's filled out by prospective jurors and did preliminary interviews, but it quickly became clear that finding a panel of six jurors plus four alternates could take a long time.
More than 100 prospective jurors were expected to report to the court yesterday for the second day.
The trial did not draw a flood of protesters or even onlookers. Only a couple of dozen appeared throughout the day. They were peaceful, tended to seek out shade and were far outnumbered by reporters and photographers.
Lawyers spent much of Monday afternoon individually asking prospective jurors what they knew about the case. They questioned four, but were not finished with them. The lawyers asked only about pretrial publicity.
The process was slow and awkward and designed, at least in the first phase, to eliminate people who, despite what they wrote on their questionnaires, might be tainted because they know some details about what happened on February 26 last year.
There is no dispute that Zimmerman shot an unarmed Martin during a fight on that rainy night in Sanford. Prosecutors will try to show Zimmerman racially profiled the teenager, while his lawyer must convince jurors Zimmerman fired a bullet into the high school student's chest because he feared for his life.
