Special counsel Jack Smith wants to implement a questionnaire for potential jurors to weed out bias in his classified documents prosecution against former President Donald Trump, citing use cases against the former CEO of Enron and the Boston Marathon bomber.
Smith made the case in a Tuesday filing, likening the pre-trial publicity in his Trump case to that of former Enron CEO of Jeffrey Skilling in 2010 and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in 2022.
"Given the media coverage this case has received, a written questionnaire that probes exposure and potential bias is a necessary step in the jury selection process," Smith said in the filing. "It will make the jury selection process more efficient and aid the Court and the parties in identifying potential bias in the jury venire."
Smith indicted Trump on 40 felony counts in allegations he mishandled classified documents and stored them at his Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving the White House.
In the case against Skilling, the District Court used a 77-question, 14-page questionnaire to winnow down prospective jurors.
In the case against Tsarnaev, the District Court "summoned an expanded jury pool of 1,373 prospective jurors and used the 100-question juror form to cull that down to 256."
Smith is asking the court to set a deadline of Feb. 2, 2024, "for the parties to jointly submit a proposed jury questionnaire identifying areas of disagreement."
"This will allow sufficient time for the parties and Court to finalize the questionnaire and implement either of the procedures set forth above," he wrote.
Smith added he "intends to recommend other procedures to protect the identities, privacy, and security of prospective and selected jurors" at a later time.
Skilling was convicted and initially sentenced to more than 34 years for engineering widespread fraud at Enron, a former energy and commodities company that subsequently filed for bankruptcy at a sum of $63.4 billion. His sentence was reduced to 14 years in a deal with the Department of Justice and he ended up serving 12.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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