Jury selection is underway in the George Zimmerman trial (expect white supremacy not justice)

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Jury selection is underway in the George Zimmerman trial. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in 2012. Lawyers on both sides are questioning candidates for the high-profile case.

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington; Neal Conan is away. For the second day in a row, lawyers questioned potential jurors in the George Zimmerman trial. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, last year.

Zimmerman claims that he was defending himself against Martin while serving as a neighborhood watch volunteer. But Martin supporters say the teenager was unarmed and targeted by Zimmerman because he was black. The racially charged trial has dominated national headlines and has been the subject of intense discussion social media.

Such widespread attention complicates the jury selection process, which can play a crucial role in the outcome of any trial. We want to hear from attorneys. Tell us about a time when jury selection made a difference in your case. And if you had to do it over, how would you change the way you chose a jury? Tell us your story. Our number is 800-989-8255. Our email address is talk@npr.org. Or you can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Later in the program, we'll talk "Game of Thrones" and unhappy endings. But first the latest in the George Zimmerman trial. Jury selection started yesterday, and Corey Dade has been covering the trial. He is a contributing editor for The Root and a former NPR corr. He joins us from Georgia Public Broadcasting in Atlanta. Welcome to the program, Corey.

COREY DADE: Hi Lynn.

NEARY: So help us put this in context. What - how much do we know, what do we know about these potential jurors?

DADE: Well, it started off, you know, the conventional wisdom was that these potential jurors would be asked a range of questions to sort of gauge their attitudes on issues that might affect the case. So their attitudes on guns, their attitudes on African-Americans, on Hispanics, whether or not they'd had experiences with crime. But so far most of the questioning has been centered on how much they actually knew about this case, and that's obviously to gauge how much they actually might have been influenced by the past 16 months of news reports and social media chatter.

So at this point they have 500 - a pool of 500 potential jurors to go through so that they can pick six.

NEARY: So can we assume from that that they're trying to find people who have not as much - know little about the case or haven't been engaging in social media and reading all the headlines?

DADE: Well, I think they want to strike a balance. Obviously the defense wants a type of juror that the prosecution does not. But I think between both sides, the ideal juror is someone who knows enough about the case but doesn't know so much to the point where they're influenced by what we've heard because there's so much information out there now that may not actually be admitted as evidence in the trial.

NEARY: And Corey, you've written a lot about how social media is playing out in this case and how it might affect the jury selection process. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

DADE: Well, social media is actually the vehicle that brought this case, the shooting, to national attention. The outcry, the national outcry about Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed, 17-year-old African-American male, being shot by Zimmerman - George Zimmerman who was 29 at the time - he went - Zimmerman went 44 days without an arrest, and that outcry through social media bubbled up to become national news.

And of course we know that that led to Zimmerman's eventual arrest. So from that moment, social media has always been involved in this. But over the last - certainly the last year, Zimmerman's attorneys have done something that's a little bit unprecedented, maybe, in legal cases. They have actively engaged in Twitter, Facebook and the Web to not only beat back sort of disinformation or myths about Zimmerman but to put out information about the evidence that they were collecting during this preparation.

This has given them an enormous platform, enormously effective platform, to shape the public's opinions about - or reshape in this case - about Zimmerman. And so the question at this point is whether or not that sort of blitz on the part of his attorneys has actually potentially influenced the opinions of these jurors.

NEARY: Well, what's interesting is that the judge has refused to put a gag order on this, right?

DADE: That's right, that's right. The prosecution has asked, four times, four separate motions with the judge, to put a gag order on both sides, and she's refused.

NEARY: And what about the prosecution? They can't use social media, is that right? Or what is their relationship to social media?

DADE: That's right, for the most part. Because they are the state, they are the government, they are prohibited from engaging in social media in the ways that the defense are. So they can not actively put out their opinions, they can't do anything to the extent that the defense can do. They can certainly go on social media and monitor traffic and pay attention to what's being said. But they can't have a voice.

NEARY: So what do both sides, both the defense and prosecution, what is it that they can glean from the conversations they might be tracking on social media?