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February 27, 2007
14 Dismissed From Couey Jury Pool
Topics: NewsMIAMI - For those left in the jury pool of the John Evander Couey trial, the questions got harder Monday.
The groups brought into the Miami courtroom where the case is being tried had to confront a personal decision: Could they vote to kill a man?
Some said no. One woman, a bank teller, said she could, a little too starkly. They were dismissed.
Unlike July, when a jury was sought in Lake County to decide whether Couey killed Jessica Marie "Jessie" Lunsford, 9, the second round of questions for possible jurors did not mark an end to the trial.
On Monday, it just marked the end of jury duty for 14 people who were dismissed for a variety of reasons.
Most had to be dismissed because jury service would represent an undue burden.
Those who remained had to answer questions about their personal lives including their hobbies, whether they had been a victim or witness of a crime, and their views on capital punishment.
The answers were carefully noted by prosecution and defense attorneys, each side searching for some nuance in the responses that might help or hurt their case.
Neither side used any of their 10 strikes, which can be leveled against anyone on the panel to leverage their dismissal.
Monday's methodical questioning also belied a serious shift in tone of the case.
"Jury service, should you be selected, is not going to be like television and the movies," Assistant State Attorney Pete Magrino said. "We're talking real life here.
"In fact, we're talking real death."
Jurors selected to sit on the case will hear grisly evidence about Jessica's death.
Couey is charged with taking the girl from her Homosassa home, raping her, then killing her. He is accused of burying her by the back steps of the trailer where he was staying, clutching a stuffed dolphin toy and wrapped in two trash bags.
Even though the members of the jury pool know little about the killing, some expressed difficulty with voting for Couey's death even if they think he killed Jessica.
"I am very against the death penalty," said one woman, a pediatric nurse.
Another woman offered the opposite view. "If this person killed somebody, he should be killed, too," she said.
Both women were dismissed.
Judge Ric Howard said he hopes to have a jury seated by this afternoon. He said that in addition to the 12-person jury, he wants at least three alternates.
Howard also decided Monday that Couey can continue to color while in the courtroom.
Prosecutors had asked Howard to order Couey to stop coloring, a practice he began two weeks ago on a day when his attorneys argued that he suffered brain damage as a child.
In making his ruling, Howard cited the gravity of the proceedings and what was at stake.
"The man is on trial for his life," the judge said.
Reporter Anthony McCartney can be reached at (813) 259-7616 or amccartney@tampatrib.com.
Posted by admin at February 27, 2007 4:00 AM
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