A seven-person jury was sworn in Thursday afternoon in the trial of former premier McKeeva Bush following a rigorous selection process during which more than 70 potential jurors were excluded from the panel.
The jury of four women and three men was finalized just after midday following painstaking efforts, spanning two days, to eliminate any appearance of bias.
The entire jury pool was asked on Wednesday morning to complete written questionnaires detailing their political affiliations, their views on gambling and their personal or business connections with Mr. Bush, who is now opposition leader.
After sorting through the answers, around 50 potential jurors were immediately dismissed. Following discussions between Mr. Bush’s lawyers and the Crown, a further 15 were eliminated.
The jurors were then drawn by random number selection from the remainder of the pool. Both the prosecution and the defense exercised their right to five “pre-emptive strikes,” eliminating 10 more people from the panel.
Two others gave excuses for why they could not serve in the four-week trial and were dismissed.
The final jury panel was given brief instructions by Justice Michael Mettyear and told not to talk to anyone about the case and to ignore media coverage. They were then dismissed for the weekend ahead of the projected start of the trial on Monday.
Mr. Bush is facing 11 charges relating to allegations that he used his government-issued credit card to spend just under US$50,000 in hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, Florida and the Bahamas.
He denies all the charges.
The trial is expected to last around four weeks. Justice Mettyear told the jury the evidence they would hear would be “detailed but not especially complicated.”
The lengthy selection process was designed to ensure impartiality in the trial of one of the most well-known men in the country.
Speaking to the entire jury pool on Wednesday morning, Justice Mettyear, said, “The defendant is a man whose name will be known to most, if not all of you. He has a long history of holding public office on this island and he was the first person to become premier after the constitution was introduced. None of that entitles him to special treatment, nor on the other hand, does it mean that he should be dealt with any less fairly than anyone else.”
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