Some notes on the Jury:
Some media reports characterized the jury as looking bored, and fidgeting, and looking around the room. That wasn’t the jury I saw. It was a long day in a long week, and by the end of the day, on Thursday, some fatigue may have set in, but my observations were that the jury has been fairly attentive, and have appeared to be into the case. In comparison to the jury assembled for Scrushy’s first trial, in Birmingham, who was often napping through an extremely tedious case, this jury has appeared to be tuned into most of the witnesses. Early in the day, the heads in the jury box looked like they were watching a tennis match, snapping back and forth between the examining attorney and the witness. There was one juror that was having trouble staying awake, as the afternoon wore on, but most of the jurors and the panel as a whole, have appeared to be fairly attentive to the proceedings. There was confusion surrounding the last witness, on Thursday, so it did seem that some of the jury were beginning to tune the courtroom out because it was the end of the day, and it was hard to follow what was going on, as the relevance of the last piece of testimony may not have been readily apparent to the jury. Of course, that witness will be on the stand on Monday and he will be greeted by a fresh jury, so this may change as long as there is not too much confusion kicked up by Art Leach’s expected motion to strike, and the government’s defense of their strategic device.
What effect would an attentive jury have? In the Birmingham trial, the napping and boredom gave a decided edge to the defense. This is not to suggest that this was a primary reason for the result in Birmingham, but only that it was one of many contributing factors. In this trial, it is too soon to tell what it will mean in the end, but it does not appear that the jury has missed much of what has gone on.
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This link has a link to a timeline of some of the events of the Siegelman-Scrushy trial. Timeline. This link will also be avaialble under the Siegelman-Scrushy tab, within the site. I will add more events and update the timeline from time to time, during the trial.