This is part of Slate’s ongoing coverage of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network.
The first official morning of the Dominion v. Fox News trial began one minute early, perhaps in recognition of Monday’s unexpected delay. At 8:59 a.m. on Tuesday, Judge Eric Davis entered courtroom 7E, which was packed to the brim with reporters, curious observers, and lawyers—lots of lawyers. By my count there are at least 49 lawyers on hand, with 10 lawyers on each side being lucky enough to sit in the cushioned, reclining seats on the “business” side of the courtroom, and the others crammed together in the gallery. (“29 excess lawyers huddled together on three wooden benches” sounds like the beginning of a very niche joke. We’ll see!)
The judge wasted little time in laying down the law. “There’s certain rules in the courtroom, my rules,” said Davis, who strikes me as someone who very much expects those rules to be observed. “We have the protocol order, and that is going to be strictly enforced, and if you violate the protocol order”—by, say, taking photos or tweeting—“you will be escorted out. I personally think something else should happen.” That’s what I scribbled down, anyway. Davis barred recording devices in the room, and I’m not going to test him.
Davis was clearly directing his words to the dozens of media members amassed in the gallery—and he wasn’t finished. “You’re not to argue with a person with a badge. At all,” said the judge, noting that if a police officer or other security official “asks you to do something—either remove your hat or don’t put your feet up—you will obey them.” Davis was clearly referring to a specific incident of which he’d been informed, and, during a subsequent break in the action, chatter around me indicated someone had indeed been removed from the rear of the courtroom for some unspecified offense. Perhaps she put her feet up? I can’t say for sure, but one person who certainly learned his lesson is author-provocateur Michael Wolff, who was told to remove his hat (which reads “Amagansett”) while in the courtroom on Monday. On Tuesday, it’s been off his head since he entered the building.
Before the morning session had officially begun, the court’s media coordinator implored reporters to type on their laptops as quietly as possible, as the judge dislikes it when people type too loud. Around 9:30 a.m., Judge Davis reiterated that message. “The computer keyboards that people are typing on can be very loud,” Davis said. “If you’re typing really loud, you may be sending some wrong message to the jury as you type. I don’t know how you keep keyboards quieter, but please do.” The din of clacking keyboards grew noticeably softer for a minute or two as we all made an effort to gently swipe our keys subtly rather than banging them like we were auditioning for Stomp.
As direct as Davis has been with the media and the attorneys, he has been genial and easy with the prospective jurors, who moved in and out of the room during this morning’s jury selection process. “We’ll refer to you as numbers today, sorry ’bout that,” Davis said. (The jurors’ names are currently being kept secret, for obvious reasons.)
The court spent about 30 minutes excusing potential jurors and bringing new ones in. No reasons were given for the strikes, which were announced by courtroom personnel, not the lawyers doing the striking. Occasionally, a juror was excused immediately after entering the room and taking their seat, requiring them to get right back up, squeeze back past the rest of the seated jurors, and exit. (“You should have seen it when we had the plastic barriers. It was really a thrill, moving everybody in and out,” quipped Davis.) When this hello/goodbye happened to a large man wearing a neon green high-visibility work jacket, like he just got off work landing planes at the airport, the courtroom broke into a spontaneous chuckle. I think we all wish that Safety-Green-Jacket Guy had made the cut.
Finally, after a dozen candidates were struck, the jury was chosen: What appeared to be five Black men, two Black women, three white women, a white man, and a Latino woman. The white guy is older and sort of looks like the actor who played Bob Vance on The Office. Two of the Black guys look middle-aged, as do two of the white women, and everyone else appears to be in their 20s or 30s. The two Black women were both wearing blazers; one of them was the only juror to wear a mask.
There were also 12 alternates chosen, one of whom, a white man in a T-shirt, raised his hand to attract the judge’s attention immediately after being sworn in. “Sir, I can’t do this,” he said, standing up. “I’ve been up all night. I can’t do this.” I’m with you, brother! He exited the room and was replaced by another alternate. “Bet you’re waiting for the next shoe to drop,” the judge joked to the jury.
This jury is theoretically one that may not have come into this trial with fully formed opinions about Fox News, Dominion, and the stupid vote-theft theories the former circulated about the latter after the 2020 presidential election. Now, the challenge will be to keep their slates as blank as possible between now and late May, when the trial is scheduled to end. “From this point forward until you retire for deliberations in the jury room, you have to fight human nature,” Davis told them, instructing them to not talk about themselves, or talk about the case, or do any independent research about the case, or to let other people discuss the case in their presence. It wasn’t all warnings and prohibitions, however: The judge informed them that, going forward, they’ll be allowed to bring beverages with them into the courtroom. “No alcohol,” he joked, and the jury smiled, grateful that he was putting them at ease. I bet that by this time next month, they’ll need some.
