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LARGO – Nearly 100 people gathered Monday in a cavernous audience hall and sat on the rows of wooden benches.
They sat in front of a group of lawyers – prosecutors, defense lawyers, a judge. Michael Drejka was wearing a gray jacket, a blue shirt and a silver tie. He has faced his peers, some of whom may decide he decides not to be released in two weeks or he faces a 30-year prison sentence.
There is no doubt that Drejka, 49, fired the shot that killed 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton in July 2018. The question, as Judge Pinellas-Pasco Joseph Bulone explained, is he's pulled the trigger to defend himself legally or if he's committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Drejka's manslaughter trial began with the tedious jury selection process. Judge Bulone, along with Drejka and state lawyers, urged jurors to question their confidence in law enforcement and the potential difficulties that would prevent them from serving. The essential part of the process took place in the afternoon, when prospective jurors met one by one to talk about what they knew of the case and the question of whether this could be detrimental to fairness and impartiality.
The morning began with about 90 people, ranging from those who seemed to be in their twenties to middle-aged and elderly people. The pool appeared largely white with few people of color, a noticeable sighting in a case that fueled racial tensions from the start. Drejka is white. McGlockton was black and unarmed.
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At the end of the day, the pool was halved. The magic number is six, plus up to four replacements. Florida has only 12 jury members in the capital's affairs.
The court has scheduled an additional 200 places Tuesday and Wednesday, but Bulone said he thought he could get a group jury from Monday before the end of Tuesday.
The morning has expired when potential jurors shared their opinions on law enforcement. Some people who were hit at the pool said that their positive or negative feelings were so strong that they could not separate them when evaluating a police officer's testimony. Several jurors were excused because they did not speak English well.
20 others were cut off after sharing personal or professional conflicts that would prevent them from staying focused on the trial, including a woman who plans to visit a family member with terminal lung cancer , a primary school teacher starting her school year and a man moving to Tennessee to work on a hemp farm.
Judge Bulone told a criminology student at the University of South Florida who was entering class next week: "What better opportunity to learn than this one?"
She was excused.
After lunch, Bulone asked the other pool members what they knew about the case. It appears that only a dozen of the remaining 60 jurors have raised their hands.
Story recounted: Michael Drejka's trial is based on how jurors interpret the video and maintain your position, according to lawyers
As the jurors were called one after the other, it seemed to be over. The common thread between them was a surveillance video that covered the entire chain of events: Drejka arguing with McGlockton's girlfriend, McGlockton placing Drejka on the ground, Drejka firing his .40 Glock caliber and shooting once against McGlockton .
"What we want to make sure," said the judge at the beginning, "is that you have not made a decision after watching the video and that you will listen to other testimonials and evidence."
Still, the video gave some people in the pool the rare opportunity to put themselves in Drejka's shoes, just like a woman who said she saw them on social media.
"I would just, in my own sense, scare me, so I could see …" she said, moving away.
She clarified that she could understand the act of self-defense in this situation. But this is not a fixed opinion, she said.
Political views, particularly on self-defense and firearms, were also taken into account. A man who looked like being in the late teens or early twenties said that he did not know much about the case but that he was generally against the second amendment.
He would do his best to be a fair and impartial juror, he said, but "there will always be a kind of unconscious bias".
The judge and lawyers on each side hit 14 people for apparent bias.
Contact Kathryn Varn at (727) 893-8913 or [email protected]. Follow @kathrynvarn. Contact Dan Sullivan at [email protected]. Follow @TimesDan.
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