Jun 20, 2007 - 04:08:07 CDT
A judge has decided attorneys may quiz potential jurors in the Moe Gibbs murder trial in secret, overruling media arguments that the reviews should be conducted in open court. A media lawyer said the move may be unprecedented in North Dakota.Potential jurors were told to fill out a lengthy questionnaire before they showed up at the Ward County Courthouse in Minot to undergo questioning by lawyers in the case. The process of picking a jury is expected to last most of the week.
During a hearing Tuesday, Southeast District Judge John T. Paulson said he was closing the courtroom to prevent jurors from having to discuss attorneys' followup questions about the juror survey in open court. It included more than 100 written questions.
Jack McDonald, a Bismarck attorney who represents newspapers and broadcasters, said he knew of no other instance in which a North Dakota judge barred the press and public from observing the questioning of potential jurors.
"In North Dakota, there has not been closed proceedings of this sort," McDonald said. "I would have thought that there could be other ways to handle confidentiality."
Under judicial rules, jurors' responses to the questionnaire itself are not public records.
Gibbs, 34, is accused of killing Mindy Morgenstern, 22, a Valley City State University senior, in her apartment last September. He has pleaded not guilty.
Gibbs was working as a Barnes County jailer when he was arrested. The trial was moved from Valley City to Minot because of pretrial publicity.
McDonald requested a hearing before the judge Tuesday on behalf of several media organizations, including the Forum newspaper, Fargo television stations WDAY and KVLY, and the Associated Press. The Forum and WDAY are both owned by Forum Communications Co. of Fargo.
McDonald argued that Paulson's order could make any jury verdict vulnerable to an appeal. In one 1980s trial in a child molestation case, the North Dakota Supreme Court reversed a guilty verdict because the judge ordered the courtroom closed during the testimony of a child witness, McDonald said in a court filing.
"The (North Dakota Supreme Court) said it has a strong preference for public trials, and that both the state and federal constitutions presume open trials as the norm," McDonald wrote.
Paulson said that once attorneys' questioning of the jurors was completed, the press and public would be able to observe lawyers' selection of the final jury.
Once a pool of potential jurors is picked, attorneys will be able to exclude potential jurors if they can argue successfully that he or she is biased.
Lawyers are also allocated a number of pre-emptory challenges, which they can use to disqualify jurors without giving any reason for doing so.
During Tuesday's hearing, Gibbs' attorneys and prosecutors did not object to Paulson's decision to allow them to question potential jurors in secret.
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