Trump Trials Jury Duty Has Fulton County Residents Feeling a Mix of Fear and Defiance

ATLANTA – Some would be scared. Some would relish the opportunity. Hardly any pretend that impartiality would be easy. 

Fulton County residents recently interviewed expressed ample mixed feelings about being called for jury duty in the unprecedented criminal trials playing out in their community where the verdicts carry significant political consequences — and where their service leaves them exposed to serious risks to their safety. 

It’s a reality that’s expected to start Friday for 450 adults who received summons to be potential jurors in the first of the trials for one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants who exercised the right under state law to have their case proceed with expediency. 

One or more additional trials are expected to follow at some point in 2024 where the guilt or innocence may be determined for the Republican’s front-runner presidential candidate, as well as a litany of co-defendants that include high-profile figures like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. 

“It’ll be hard to find an impartial jury,” said Nina Fleming, a 52-year-old Fulton County resident The Messenger spoke to while she took a Sunday walk along Atlanta’s beltline, the 22-mile loop of railroad track that has been converted into a green space and walking path in the city’s core. “You should not come in with a preconceived idea.”

Fleming, a corporate diversity advocate, said she was also concerned about safety, in particular after learning that a number of grand jurors who brought the original indictment against Trump and 18 of his fellow alleged co-conspirators had personally-identifying information published on the internet with malicious intent, also known as doxxing. 

“I would be concerned about security because some of Trump’s followers can threaten people with violence,” she said. 

Doxxing and threats

Juror safety has been front of mind for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office.

She requested in early September that the state judge overseeing the entire Trump case take extra measures to protect the potential panel that was to be seated in the first trial against pro-Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell. 

The two attorneys had been scheduled to face trial together but that changed on Thursday when Powell pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit election interference on the eve of trial. Now, it’s just Chesebro in the first trial.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee had responded to Willis with court orders barring the press from publishing any identifying details about jurors — a rare move that limits how reporters typically cover legal proceedings. 

Willis had reasons for her request.

Following the original indictment in August, the names and contact information of members of the grand jury were published online, including by a Russian company on the dark web. Even the federal government told Georgia officials it couldn’t take measures to get the information taken down. 

What’s more, threats were directed at Willis and her family as well as Fulton County Sheriff Patrick ‘Pat’ Labat and sheriff’s office staff in the run up to Trump’s surrender at the Fulton County Jail, where he and others submitted to mugshots and fingerprinting before posting bail. 

A couple in their early 60’s who declined to have their names published said they too had security concerns about serving as a juror on a Trump trial. 

“I really feel for those jurors,” the woman, who said she worked as a grief counselor, told The Messenger outside of Atlanta’s Ponce City Market. “I would feel afraid if I was one of those jurors, because he’s [Trump] a thug.”

McAfee had said before the Powell guilty plea that he expects to seat a jury of 12 plus alternates by Nov. 3 if not sooner. After 450 people fill out the questionnaire they will be divided into panels subjected to individual questioning over the week that follows in a process known as ‘voir-dire.’ A second batch of 450 people have been summoned to appear on Oct. 27 if a full jury isn’t impaneled from the first batch. 

At least one question out of dozens that jurors will be asked in that questionnaire will ask them about fears they might have given the nature of the case. 

“Assume you were a juror in this case, would you feel nervous or anxious about returning any verdict out of concern for how the public might respond?” read a draft question McAfee read in court Monday.

‘Bring it on’

The Georgia jurors selected in the coming days may be the first, but they won’t be the last to bear the burden of adjudicating a politically fraught trial during an election year at a time when scholars say the country is at its most polarized since the Civil War. 

Some Fulton County residents, like 26-year-old Sydney Levine who works in health care tech, are undeterred by the inflamed political rhetoric and specter of political violence that looms over a trial where Trump himself is the lead co-defendant.

“Bring it on,” she said, speaking to a reporter outside a taqueria in the trendy and gentrified Inman Park neighborhood. “I think it’s better to be in the know, and being on the jury would be knowing. I wouldn’t be afraid.”

But even in Democratic-heavy Fulton County – where voter turnout topped 65% in 2020 and President Joe Biden carried the county by a nearly 3 to 1 margin over Trump – some residents, and possible jurors, said they really just don’t know what the grand jury indictment is all about. 

“What did he do? If he hurt nobody, killed nobody, who am I to judge?,” said Trae Reed, 39, a singer and Fulton County native.

A significant portion of the juror questionnaire on the agenda beginning Friday will inform jurors on the key logistics of the case: its duration, the nature of the charges, and a summary of the indictment in a paragraph of judge-approved text that’s also been agreed to by both prosecutors and defense attorneys. The trial is estimated to last five months, and jurors are only paid $25 per day to cover lunch, meaning many jurors will be excused for hardship at the discretion of the judge. 

It’s a factor that would eliminate many jurors who cannot afford to take that time off work, which would exclude many younger, poorer jurors, contract workers and salaried professionals whose employers would not provide them with some form of pay for jury duty. Georgia law does not require employers to provide paid time off for jury duty, it only prevents employers from firing someone while they are on jury duty.  Jurors with medical issues or caregiving responsibilities are also excused. 

The questionnaire, finalized earlier this week, is also expected to include dozens of questions to gauge potential jurors' awareness of the case, its key players and the political leanings of jurors. 

“Nobody knows what he’s [Trump] on trial for,” Daniel LeClair, a 30-year-old painter told The Messenger while taking a smoke break in-between riding his skateboard in the Old Fourth Ward, the neighborhood where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up and later preached at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. 

“I would have no problem going through that,” LeClair added of the prospect of serving on such a jury. He said he wouldn’t be afraid, but would be skeptical of how a jury could possibly be unbiased given the strong feelings people have. 

“How could you be isolated from that? People have the internet, they’re going to have an opinion either way,” he said.