ORLANDO, Fla. _ Attorneys in the trial of Noor Salman on Thursday morning struggled to add jurors to the pool of candidates to try the case against Pulse gunman Omar Mateen's widow, finding some potential jurors had detailed knowledge of the case or strong feelings about Salman's guilt.
One man said his intuition told him Salman could have stopped her husband. He said he believed she was partially responsible for what happened.
"It's just a feeling she was present. She was there. She had the opportunity to maybe call police, to maybe do something," he said, before being excused.
Two others were excused after telling U.S. Judge Paul Byron they had followed the news closely, and knew details of the arguments made by Salman's defense and government prosecutors.
Thursday is the sixth day of jury selection for Salman, who is accused of aiding and abetting Mateen and of obstruction of justice. She faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Earlier in the day, a potential juror raised the question of whether Pulse was targeted by Mateen because it was a gay club. The juror _ who was removed from the pool of potential jurors for Salman's trial _ said she believed the gay community had been targeted in the attack.
The question of whether Mateen was targeting the LGBTQ community was the subject of a recent motion by Salman's defense, which argued that cellphone and other evidence suggests that Mateen also considered another nightclub and Disney Springs as targets in the hours before the Pulse attack.
The evidence "strongly suggests that the attack on Pulse was not a result of a prior plan to attack a gay nightclub," Salman's attorneys wrote in the motion.
In court Thursday, Byron, who has not ruled on the motion, indicated that prosecutors plan to argue during trial Mateen _ who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group _ was motivated by terrorism in the early hours of June 12, 2016, when he gunned down 49 clubgoers.
The juror said she still didn't think she could be impartial.
Another potential juror questioned Thursday morning said she believed Muslim women weren't afforded the same rights as men. She wondered if Salman might have been involved because her husband was controlling. Salman's defense asked the woman if she thought, simply because she was married to Mateen, Salman must have known of his plan in advance of the attack.
No, the woman said.
"We don't always know what our significant others are doing," she said.
The juror was kept in the pool.
Also kept in the running was a man who recently took a law school entrance exam. Afterward, defense lawyer Linda Moreno said she should have asked whether he aspires to be a prosecutor or defense lawyer.
In the first five days of jury selection, Byron spoke with 77 potential jurors and kept 40 in the jury pool. Another two could also be included if they can sort out concerns with their work and child care. The rest were excused _ some for medical or financial concerns, some because they had strong views about the case or deep connections that prevented them from judging Salman impartially.
Jurors were called to the Orlando courthouse in the fall of 2017 to fill out a questionnaire about their backgrounds, knowledge of the case and views on a wide range of topics from domestic violence to Islam.
Byron told attorneys Wednesday afternoon that they will likely finish questioning jurors one at a time on Friday or Monday. After that they will narrow the pool to a jury of 12 and six alternates and could start to hear testimony in the case on Wednesday.
