Tempers flare briefly on 8th day of jury selection in Wilkinsburg mass shooting case
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Tempers briefly flared before interviews began Wednesday on the eighth day of jury selection in the 2016 Wilkinsburg mass shooting case.
Cheron Shelton, 32, and Robert Thomas, 31, both face five counts of homicide, one count of homicide of an unborn child and a multitude of other charges related to the March 9, 2016, shooting at a backyard cookout at a home on Franklin Avenue.
Prior to morning interviews, Shelton’s attorney, Wendy Williams, made a point to note on the record that she’d been “admonished” by a sheriff’s deputy a day earlier because Shelton ate a mint that was sitting on the table in front of them.
She noted that she did not give him a Tic Tac; rather, she had them on the table and he ate one.
“I’m certainly not in a position to slap his hand,” Williams said. “They are human beings.”
“They’re prisoners,” Assistant District Attorney Lisa Pellegrini countered, noting that she was less concerned with the mint and more so with a cookie apparently given to Thomas by one of his attorneys.
Wednesday marked the eighth day in a selection process that has seen long hours in a corner conference room on the fifth floor of the courthouse.
Shelton and Thomas could face the death penalty if convicted.
Attorneys interviewed 13 prospective jurors, including the two deemed acceptable by both sides of the table.
One of the selected jurors, an architect, said he would be hard-pressed to give the death penalty but could do so if justified by law.
The other, a woman, works in nursing.
The two brought the total jurors seated to 11. One juror who was selected last week was excused on Tuesday.
One potential juror, a younger woman, was stricken for cause after she said she’d likely have a favorable bias toward the prosecution because she has relatives in local law enforcement. Another was struck when she said she would need prosecutors to prove their case beyond doubt — to a standard higher than the law’s “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Stricken for cause means a juror expressed opinions that wouldn’t allow them to be impartial.
One man was excused because he was starting a new job on the first day of the trial. Another man said he’d heard details about the shooting and arrests on the news and it was “kind of hard not to form a fixed opinion.”
Eight others were excused for various reasons, including one man who’d inadvertently seen one of the defendants in handcuffs during the lunch break. Prospective jurors who see a defendant in shackles or handcuffs are automatically excluded, according to Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski, who is presiding over the case.
Prosecutors used a peremptory challenge to strike a social worker who said she works with children. Peremptory challenges allow either side to disqualify a juror without stating a reason.
The trial is set to begin Feb. 3 and could last up to three weeks.