After five years and many unusual delays, jury selection began Monday in the second trial of Anthony Jackson, whose attorney brother George Jackson III is representing him on murder charges.
Over two sessions of questioning, 12 jurors and two alternates were selected for a trial that is slated to last through the week.
While much of the case has been marked by the unpredictable behavior of George Jackson, jury selection went relatively smoothly. There was only one real hiccup: A juror was selected, then complained that he would not be able to make it for the whole week.
When the judge, Ursula Walowski, insisted that he had been selected and would have to appear, the man seemed to walk away said, “he’s guilty anyway.” Walowski then booted him from the jury.
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And Jackson asked the day’s first group of potential jurors an unusual question. This case “involves violence,” he told them.
“It involves stomping and kicking. Stomping and kicking by my client. I’d like to know if any one of you would not be able to engage your intellect over your emotion in seeing the stomping and kicking by my client, and decide the case based upon your intellect about the evidence as opposed to your emotions,” he said.
“Mr. Jackson is asking, can you … use your intellect and not your passions, basically,” Walowski clarified.
“It’s a significant question,” Jackson said. “I’d add … it does involve violence. It does involve assault … just seeing that, and I don’t know … .”
“Mr. Jackson, you’re getting the question too complicated for the jurors,” the judge interrupted, and then addressed potential jurors. “For those of you who understand the question counsel’s asking, is there anybody out there who can’t do that? All right. No one has raised their hand.”
Anthony Jackson is accused of beating a man to death on a Green Line platform in 2013, in an incident captured on CTA surveillance cameras. He has long claimed self-defense, saying the other man, Sanchez Mixon, was threatening him.
He was convicted at trial in 2015, but that conviction was tossed out after a lengthy effort by his brother.
Since then, the case has taken highly unusual twists and turns. For a time, George Jackson was removed from representing his brother altogether and, separately, banned from entering the courthouse. He sometimes has failed to show up in court for trial dates. But Monday, as jurors were selected, it was the closest the case has come to an actual retrial in years.
Jurors were instructed to return Tuesday morning.
Jury trials look different in the COVID-19 era. Only one is heard at the Leighton Criminal Court Building per week. Jurors sit in the gallery where spectators normally would sit; witnesses testify from the jury box, and the proceedings are livestreamed to a room in the courthouse cafeteria so that observers can watch from chairs positioned 6 feet apart.