Jury selection will continue — and could conclude — today in Trump‘s historic New York criminal trial.
With a full 12-person jury and one alternate juror sworn in yesterday, Merchan has called a pool of 96 potential jurors to his Manhattan courtroom in hope of finding five more alternate jurors for the first trial of a former president, which is expected to last roughly six weeks.
In addition to those 96 potential jurors, there are 22 left over from yesterday who will be questioned, as well.
If the effort to fill the jury box is successful, opening statements could take place as soon as Monday.
The main panel of 12 is made up of seven men and five women, including two lawyers, a teacher, a retired wealth manager, a product development manager, a security engineer, a software engineer, a speech therapist and a physical therapist. The foreman — the juror who essentially acts as the leader and spokesperson for the panel — is a married man who works in sales and gets his news from The New York Times, MSNBC and Fox News.
The lone alternate selected yesterday is a woman who works as an asset manager.
Also today, Merchan is expected to hold what’s known as a Sandoval hearing, a type of hearing designed to let defendants know the scope of questions they could face from prosecutors on cross-examination so they can make informed decisions about whether to take the witness stand in their own defense.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office disclosed in a court filing that it would like to ask Trump about several items, among them the $464 million civil judgment against him and his company for fraud, the total $88 million verdicts and liability findings for sexual abuse and defamation in lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, and a number of other adverse court rulings over the past few years.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the cases and is appealing the fraud judgment and the Carroll verdicts.
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