About 75 Potential Jurors Identified For Noor Trial

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The trial began Monday morning for a former Minneapolis police officer accused of shooting and killing a woman while on duty.

Mohamed Noor is accused of shooting and killing Justine Ruszczyk Damond while responding to a 911 call in 2017. Noor has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges.

On Monday, jury selection began at about 10:30 a.m. and the process was expected to be complicated given how much attention the shooting has received.

There are about 75 potential jurors. Only about 25 of them were women. They each walked into the room with a number displayed from their necks. During the trial, the jury's identity will be confidential, so they will only be referenced by their numbers.

Judge Kathryn Quaintance started explaining how jury duty works, and the charges Noor is facing. She told them that they were expecting this trial to last three or four weeks, which is longer than the two weeks most other juries are told to block off.

After going through all the rules, the judge told the potential jury to fill out a lengthy questionnaire, and then they could leave for the day and were told not to come back on Tuesday. Jury selection will start back up on Wednesday. Jurors will be called back in small groups at that time.

Meanwhile, a group of activists were downstairs calling for courtroom transparency during the trial. A coaliton of social justice organizations stood shoulder to shoulder, speaking out against what they believe is a limit on the public's ability to watch courtroom proceedings.

Members of Justice for Justine are calling on the judge and chief judge to move the trial to a larger courtroom and to allow graphic evidence to be seen by all and not just the jury.

"A case which has attracted international attention is being held in a 28-seat courtroom. Space is so tight that the Ruszczyk and Noor families are literally seated in the same row shoulder-to-shoulder, and only a handful of media outlets have been granted permanent access for the duration of the trial," Todd Schuman, with Justice For Justine, said. "The audio feed in the equally tiny overflow room is incomprehensible and several key pieces of evidence will not be shown in this space. This arrangement is a First Amendment violation that cripples public insight into the trial and is a slap in the face to advocates who have spent years working for justice in cases like these."

The unified group discussed the increased media coverage of Justine Ruszcyk Damond's killing and how the lives of all victims of police involved shootings should be seen as valuable.

"We cannot just prosecute officers when they are black and we cannot just have compassion for victims when they are white. It is time for us to stand up for all humanity," NAACP Minneapolis chapter president Leslie Redmond said.

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Top criminal defense attorney Earl Gray, who represented Jeronimo Yanez in the Philando Castile case, said the defense will have to prove Noor was trying to do his job when he shot Ruszczyk Damond and is remorseful about what happened.

Prior to the shooting, Ruszczyk Damond had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her south Minneapolis home.

According to a criminal complaint, Noor, who responded to the 911 call, heard a thump on the side of the squad car and shot across his partner.

The shot struck and killed Ruszczyk Damond, a 40-year-old Australian native and yoga teacher.

According to Gray, when it comes to the trial itself, both sides have problems, as he called this a 50-50 case.

One hurdle for prosecutors is that in the last month the judge decided that certain factors, like a previous psych evaluation and Noor's pretrial silence, cannot be used as evidence in this trial.