A look at how jury selection will work in Donald Trump's first criminal trial
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s history-making criminal trial is set to start Monday with a simple but extraordinary procedural step that is vital to American democracy. A group of regular citizens — Trump’s peers, in the eyes of the law — will be chosen to decide whether the former president of the United States is guilty of a crime.
The process of picking a jury could take days. Lawyers on both sides of the case will have limited opportunities to try and shape the panel in their favor, but the court’s goal won’t be to ensure that it has a partisan balance between Democrats and Republicans, or is made up of people oblivious to previous news coverage about the trial.
The idea is to get people who are willing to put their personal opinions aside and make a decision based on the evidence and the law.
Here are some of the factors that will go into jury selection: