A 14 member jury is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday morning before opening statements begin in the Terry Sturgis murder trial. Judge Jane Woodward Miller seated the jury Tuesday, after two days of trying to find unbiased jurors. All but one of the 14 went through individual interviews before the "normal" jury selection process began to see how pre-trial publicity has impacted them.
It’s made up of nine women and five men – including a banker, nurse, nursing student, aMcDonald's restaurant manager, drug counselor and several parents – who will sit in the courtroom during days of testimony and evidence presentation in the trial.
Of the 12 jurors and 2 alternates, only one of them – a 21-year-old man – said he had not heard anything about Sturgis or the case before arriving for jury selection.
Another man told the judge one of his family members gives Sturgis dialysis treatments. During jury selection, he said he’d feel pressure from friends and family to rule one way or another but that would not sway his ability to be unbiased.
