Opening statements will begin Wednesday. The 16 jurors who will hear evidence against Jonathan Pishoi Nakhla include four alternates.
Prosecutors allege that Nakhla, 38, was drunk and driving at speeds that reached 138 mph when his Audi Spyder crashed on the Interstate 65 service road. Samantha Thomas, a University of South Alabama College of Medicine student who was riding with Nakhla at the time, died. Some 60 potential jurors filled out questionnaires and answered questions over the past two days. Those queries ranged from whether they know any of the witnesses in the case to whether they have moral objections to alcohol to their familiarity with high-performance sports cars.“I don’t know anything about them,” she said.
Later, Mobile County Circuit Judge Ben Brooks individually questioned potential jurors who had indicated they heard anything about the case in the news media. Some suggested it would be difficult to ignore what they already knew from the news coverage. One man said he had seen on the news that there was an accident and that the driver had been speeding. The judge asked if he had formed an opinion based on the news coverage.Could he set aside whatever he read or heard and render a verdict based solely on the evidence at trial?Another man said he was surprised when called to jury duty that the case was still going on.Asked if he could put aside what he has heard about the case, he answered: “It would be hard from what I know going into it.
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