They arrived one by one through the beige door at the back of courtroom 10C at the courthouse in downtown Grand Rapids, a random collection of residents of Kent County, picked by the court to be in a pool of potential jurors for the most anticipated trial the area has seen in years.
When they reached their seats and started answering the questions from attorneys, most said they were already familiar with the case. It was on the news. People had talked about it at work. Videos appeared in their social media feeds.
Christopher Schurr, a white Grand Rapids police officer, shot and killed Patrick Lyoya, a Black Congolese refugee, in the line of duty on April 4, 2022. And these were some of the people who might decide if the officer should be found guilty of murder.
But before they could be assigned to the jury, attorneys probed them for biases and preconceived ideas that could sway the case.
They just wanted to find jurors that could be impartial, attorneys for both sides told them.
For some, it was a problem that couldn’t be overcome. They’d seen the videos. They’d formed an opinion already.
“It would be a tremendous burden on my part to put that aside,” said one possible juror, who said he saw videos of the shooting on TikTok. The man was dismissed from the jury pool.
Others said while they remember hearing about the case, it was too long ago to remember.
“I’ll be honest, that was two years ago,” said one. “I just don’t remember a lot of the details.”
(Michigan Public is not publishing the names of the potential jurors in court at the request of court staff, and to protect the identities of those who may yet serve on the case.)
Attorneys questioned more than 30 potential jurors on Tuesday, more than enough to fill the jury box for the case, but attorneys exercised their strikes to cut the list as the process wore on.
The jurors came from different walks of life, from different parts of Kent County. Most were female.
And in a case in which a white police officer killed a Black man, none of the potential jurors in court on Tuesday appeared to be Black. Some appeared to be of Hispanic descent, but most were white and most were female.
Jury selection continues into Wednesday. The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, April 28.
