Wednesday morning the legal teams in Alabama Speaker Mike Hubbard's ethics trial selected a jury consisting of 12 jurors and four alternates.
Nine members of the 16 jury members are black and seven are white. Nine are male and seven are female. Five were black men, four were black women, four were white men and three were white women.
Hubbard was indicted October 2014 on 23 counts of violating Alabama ethics laws — the same set of ethics laws he helped pass after he was elected House speaker in 2010. Each of the 23 charges could carry a sentence of 2–20 years or a maximum fine of $30,000.
Four of the 12 jury members are alternates. Those alternates will sit on the jury throughout the entire trial, but they will not have a vote when the jury begins to deliberate.
"Some of y'all are alternates, and we're not going to tell you who you are," Lee County Circuit Judge Jacob Walker said.
Walker chose not to swear the jury in this morning, instead he said the jury would be sworn in Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. before the trial is set to begin. Walker gave the final jury strict instructions not to discuss the trial with anyone inside or outside of the courthouse.
The jury is not allowed to discuss the trial with one another.
The pool of potential jurors totaled in this morning at 52 before the legal teams began removing jurors from the list.
Both the prosecution and the defense struck 18 individual potential jurors from the list. During this phase of the jury selection process, the legal teams did not have to provide a reason why they wished to strike their selected jurors.
The first potential juror removed from the jury by Hubbard's defense knew about case before jury qualification began and had connections with one of Hubbard's political challengers.
The stricken potential juror also said he had negative impressions about politicians, but he could put them aside.
"It's sort of a thing people say," the juror said. "I wouldn't say I feel that negatively about [politicians]."
The juror said his wife had worked with Shirley Scott-Harris, Hubbard's 2014 election challenger, at Auburn University, but he didn't know her personally.
The defense has filed several Writs of Mandamus, all of which have been denied by Walker. However, on Wednesday, Hubbard's defense team insinuated they would file another writ on Thursday or Friday, which may delay the trial again.
The writ, which is currently under seal, will most likely appeal the case to a higher court, possibly even the Alabama Supreme Court.
A motion regarding the identities of two commenters on an AL.com article will be taken up Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. The defense filed a motion to obtain the identities of the two commenters earlier in the pretrial process.
The trial is expected to last three to four weeks.
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