Jury selection is set to begin Monday to impanel a group of 12 New Yorkers who will ultimately decide whether to convict former President Donald Trump in his first criminal trial.
Court officials expect about 500 new jurors to appear each day beginning April 15 to be available for the selection process, though some of those individuals will also be pulled to other cases in the court system.
As in any state criminal court case in the county, the pool will be limited to people who live in Manhattan.
About 100 prospective jurors at a time will be brought into Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom to be vetted.
Twelve jurors will make up the panel that will ultimately consider the 34 counts of falsifying business records against Trump. Six alternates will also hear the case in case a juror on the main panel needs to be replaced.
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Prospective jurors can be dismissed by the judge for cause if he finds they shouldn’t serve on the panel. Prosecutors and Trump’s defense team will also get 10 peremptory strikes they can use to remove a juror from the pool, no questions asked.
Jury selection is set to begin Monday to impanel a group of 12 New Yorkers who will ultimately decide whether to convict former President Donald Trump in his first criminal trial.
Questioning the jury pool
Potential jurors tapped to enter the prospective pool for Trump’s panel will complete a questionnaire created by the judge with input from the attorneys for Trump and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
They will be asked a wide range of questions, including where in the city they live, where they get their news, whether they’ve ever attended a rally for the former president and whether they have had any affiliation with groups like the Proud Boys or the QAnon movement.
Potential jurors will be quizzed on their feelings about Trump, but they won’t be asked explicitly which political party they belong to or which candidates they’ve voted for or have made campaign contributions to. Trump’s lawyers wanted to ask those questions, but the judge excluded them from the final questionnaire.
The prospective jurors will be asked if they or anyone in their circle have ever been to Trump rally, worked or volunteered for a Trump presidential campaign, the Trump presidential administration, or any other political entity affiliated with Trump. They’ll also be asked if they’ve ever participated in any anti-Trump groups or events.
In addition to their news consumption, jurors will be asked whether they’ve ever read or listened to any books or podcasts by Michael Cohen or former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who also wrote a book about this case.
Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, is also listed among the platforms potential panel members will be asked about.
If they make it into the jury box in Merchan’s courtroom, they’ll read their answers out loud. The attorneys and the judge can then ask them follow-up questions to further vet them for possible conflicts or biases.
Merchan has said he will dismiss any prospective jurors who self-report that they believe they are unable to serve on the panel. Merchan ruled he will dismiss those prospective jurors without individually questioning them about their reasoning despite a request from Trump’s attorneys to do so.
When Merchan presided over the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial in 2022, he individually questioned prospective jurors about their reasoning.
In a pretrial letter last week, the judge said that process was “time consuming and unproductive” and not logistically feasible in a packed courtroom filled with several attorneys for each side plus the Secret Service agents providing added security for Trump.
We’ve heard this before
Hundreds of New York jurors have been asked similar questions about their feelings about Trump and their news-reading habits at other trials such as the Trump Organization tax fraud trial and Trump’s civil trials with writer E. Jean Carroll.
Jurors in both trials with Carroll in New York federal court were asked whether they associated with any fringe groups.
A couple of jurors in Trump’s most recent trial with Carroll said they believed the 2020 election was stolen. Merchan said he will not ask jurors their thoughts on the 2020 election outcome during the voir dire process in this case.
The jury will remain anonymous
Identifying information about the jurors will not be publicly released to protect jurors’ privacy and avoid “exposing them to an atmosphere of intimidation.”
Merchan warned Trump in a gag order that he can’t make public comments or direct anyone else to make public comments about jurors involved in the proceedings.
A sketch artist will be allowed in the courtroom during the selection process, but they have been instructed not to sketch jurors’ faces.
The media cannot photograph or record the proceedings, and only a few reporters will be permitted into the courtroom at one time to see prospective jurors questioned in the jury box.
Most reporters will cover jury selection from an overflow courtroom with a view of Trump and the lawyers on closed-circuit monitors.
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Will 2024 voter turnout be the same as in the 2020 presidential election?
Will 2024 voter turnout be the same as in the 2020 presidential election?
As 15 states held Democratic and Republican primaries on March 5, Super Tuesday, the number of people who voted and the candidates they selected offered key insight into upcoming the November 5th presidential election. Residents of California, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Colorado, Minnesota, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah, Maine and Alaska have determined the fate of roughly one-third of the delegates needed to win the respective party primaries. After the primaries, 530 electoral votes will be up for grabs – with 270 needed to secure the presidency.
Just over two-thirds of adults in the U.S. voted in 2020. But from state to state, the turnout ranged from 54% to 80%, leaving a lot of voting power on the table in some cases. Meanwhile, small reallocations of electoral votes will affect 13 states this election cycle. With this in mind, SmartAsset ranked each state by the percent of citizen adults who voted in the 2020 presidential election.
Key findings
- Minnesota had the highest voter turnout in 2020 at 80%. Minnesota had the highest turnout countrywide at 79.7% of the adult citizen population. Colorado placed second with 79.0%, Maine third with 77.4%, Washington fourth at 76.5% and Oregon fifth at 76.4%.
- Higher voter turnout leaned heavily blue, while lower voter turnout swung heavily red in 2020. Out of the top 10 states with the highest turnouts for the 2020 election, only one of 89 electoral votes was red. Of the 10 states with the lowest turnouts, only nine of 101 electoral college votes were blue.
- Florida had the highest voter turnout of red-voting states in 2020. Still, no Southern state made it to the top 10. Florida placed 14th with a 72.3% voter turnout, and North Carolina placed 15th with approximately the same turnout.
- Less than 60% of citizens over 18 voted in five states. Oklahoma had the lowest voter turnout in 2020 at 54.7%. Arkansas (54.9%), West Virginia (55.6%), Hawaii (56.8%) and Mississippi (58.7%) also had some of the lowest turnouts.
- States that flipped from red to blue in 2020 had average or above average voter turnout. Despite being red in 2016, Wisconsin (75.1%), Michigan (73.6%), Pennsylvania (70.7%) voters turned out to flip the state last election. While Arizona and Georgia also flipped, slightly less than the U.S. average turned out to vote at 67.0% and 66.8%, respectively.
- Texas gets two more electoral votes this year. Texas had the sixth-lowest voter turnout at 60.9%, but the state now has 40 electoral votes compared to 38 in 2020. Five other states get one more electoral vote this year: Florida (72.4% turnout in 2020), North Carolina (72.3%), Colorado (79.0%), Oregon (76.4%) and Montana (73.3%).
- These states lost electoral votes for 2024. California still has the most electoral votes at 54 in 2024, despite losing one from the last election cycle. Last election, California had a 67.9% turnout. New York (62.9% turnout in 2020), Illinois (66.5%), Pennsylvania (70.7%), Ohio (66.9%), Michigan (73.6%) and West Virginia (55.65) also lost one electoral vote each for 2024.
10 counties with the highest voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election
Rankings are based on the percent of resident citizens aged 18 and over who voted in the last presidential election.
- Garfield County, MT: 99.8%
- Grand Isle County, VT: 99.6%
- Hanson County, SD: 99.5%
- Ouray County, CO: 97.5%
- Mineral County, CO: 95.9%
- Hinsdale County, CO: 95.0%
- Dukes County, MA: 95.0%
- Douglas County, CO: 94.7%
- Borden County, TX: 94.5%
- Leelanau County, MI: 94.3%
10 counties with the lowest voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election
Rankings are based on the percent of resident citizens aged 18 and over who voted in the last presidential election.
- Chattahoochee County, GA: 19.4%
- Lake County, TN: 32.9%
- Wheeler County, GA: 35.0%
- Oglala Lakota County, SD: 35.5%
- Lincoln County, AR: 35.7%
- Pulaski County, MO: 36.3%
- Reeves County, TX: 36.5%
- Crowley County, CO: 36.6%
- St. Francis County, AR: 36.9%
- Telfair County, GA: 37.1%
Data and methodology
Data is for 2023 and comes from County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. Voter turnout is based on the percentage of the citizen population aged 18 and over who voted in the U.S. Presidential election in 2020.
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This story was produced by SmartAsset and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.
