Kott Trial - Day 1 - Morning Review & Jury Selection

Attorney Doug Pope talking to press after his client Bruce Weyhrauch's case was split from Peter Kott's. When asked when he thought the case would be heard, he said probably 2009.



I checked the court schedule before going to bed and so discovered there was an 8am pre-trial meeting scheduled. The ADN website already had its morning article on the case, saying that the government was appealing the ruling disallowing them to argue that state laws required Kott and Weyhrauch report that they were negotiating for jobs with Veco. It seemed like a pretty important point, so I struggled to get there by 8am. When I did get there ADN reporter Rich Mauer was outside the courtroom as were others. Already, just 15 minutes in, there was a recess as the attorneys were deciding which cards to play.

The government wanted to appeal Judge Sedwick's decision to the 9th Circuit, but only for Weyhrauch. Thus, if the two defendants remained in a single case, the case would have to be postponed. The defendant's attorneys, who had previously asked to split the cases and had their motion rejected, had prepared for a joint case. So what should they do?

Doug Pope, Weyhrauch's attorney argued that there was a 1979 case that set a precedent here. (Sorry, it sounded like Loudrock, but I couldn't figure out the spelling.) If the government were appealing to delay the case, the district judge could just dismiss the case. The government said there were other aspects to the case that were in its favor. Kott's attorney, James Wendt, when asked, said they wanted to continue with their trial, but given the changes and the possible severing of the two cases, needed more time to prepare witness questioning strategy. He requested that if the Kott only trial continued, that the opening arguments not start before Monday, that government reveal if they are going to call Bill Allen and Rick Smith as witnesses, and if they are, when.

Government agreed to those requests, except they said they couldn't predict what day they would appear, if they appeared. The agreed to disclose the witness order. Then there was another recess as the judge went to read the cases.

So this led to waiting around in the Federal Building until the judge was ready. In this picture, KTUU Reporter Bill McAllister is calling in.

And in this picture, there's an unidentified KTUU Cameraperson, Bill Roth of the ADN, Lisa Demer of the ADN, and Michael Carey waiting for the attorneys and defendants to return to the courtroom. I'm a little shy about taking pictures of people without at least their tacit approval. The news folks didn't object and I figure they ought to be on the other side now and then.

I reported the decision to split the cases in an earlier brief post. (There were two public use computers in the Federal Building cafeteria.) There was another break after Weyhrauch's side was taken out of this trial.


Jury selection began around 11:10. The whole jury pool was brought into the courtroom. Those of us still there were asked to move to the front as about 80 jurors came in. There was to be a two part questioning. The judge apologized several times for the lengthiness of the jury selection, but given the extensive publicity in this case, he wanted to be sure none of the jurors was already biased.

So most of the jury, after some explanation and swearing in, was excused back to an early lunch, except for ten. These ten, randomly selected, were individually questioned, without any other jurors in the room, about what they've read or heard about the case and their feelings about the defendant. It took the first ten from 11:30am to 12:30pm. Only seventy left to go. There were only four or five of us in the audience still left and after the first ten, I decided I didn't need to stay longer. At this rate it will be noon tomorrow til they're finished with this part, and will begin the regular jury questioning.