WILMINGTON, Del. — Jury selection in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case is set to begin Thursday morning, as the Delaware court works to identify 12 jurors and six alternates to hear the arguments against Fox News and Fox Corp.
Potential jurors will be interviewed about their ability to render an impartial opinion by Judge Eric Davis on Thursday and Friday, as he and the attorneys narrow down the jury pool.
The potential jurors are expected to be asked questions such as whether they watch Fox News or whether they have ever volunteered as poll workers.
April 12, 202300:56
Dominion, which manufactures voting machines, alleges that Fox News damaged its reputation by promoting phony claims that it was tied to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, paid kickbacks to politicians and “rigged” the 2020 presidential election by flipping millions of votes for Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
In a victory for Dominion in a pretrial hearing, the judge ruled that jurors will be instructed that all those claims are false.
Each side’s legal team is permitted six challenges, which allows it to eliminate jurors. But outside legal experts note that neither side will get a wish list in this process.
“Delaware is not as strict about conflicts as maybe other states are,” said David Finger, a media lawyer who practices in Delaware. “It’s a small state, people generally only one or two degrees of separation of everyone else. The fact that you may know a lawyer on the case may or may not be sufficient to get you rejected.”
The trial is expected to last six weeks, during which jurors will be asked to consider if Fox News acted with knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth when they broadcast and published conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and if damages are due. They will also be asked to weigh whether Fox Corp. was involved enough to be liable in the alleged defamation.
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The jurors will be anonymous to the public and media — identified only by numbers — but will be free to speak to the media after the verdict is rendered, if they so choose.
The selection process is critical, because the jurors will be required to reach an unanimous decision to find the Fox defendants guilty of defamation.
Anthony Michael Glassman, a longtime media lawyer who has represented both outlets and their subjects in media cases, said the lawyers will be hoping that the judge allows them to glean insight into jurors’ views on the underlying partisan issues.
“I’ve tried enough jury cases to know — unless I’m in the courtroom trying the case or unless I’m at least there looking at the jury — you can always be surprised,” he told NBC News.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
