© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Miniatures of ballot boxes are seen in front of Dominion voting systems and Fox logos in this illustration taken April 6, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Written by Helen Koster
(Reuters) – The jury selection process in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp is expected to begin Thursday, as the court asks 12 Delaware residents from a heavily Democratic county to decide whether Fox News broadcast Knowingly false allegations regarding election fraud. 2020 US presidential election.
Dominion says Fox destroyed its business by airing knowingly debunked allegations that vote-counting machines were used to overturn the election results against former President Donald Trump, a Republican who lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
The jury’s primary question will be whether Fox knowingly spread false information or recklessly ignores the truth, the “actual malice” standard should prevail.
Fox argued in legal filings that Dominion’s $1.6 billion damages request is “out of touch with reality” and designed to enrich the company’s investors.
The trial is widely seen as a test of whether Fox coverage has crossed the line between ethical journalism and the pursuit of ratings, Dominion claims and Fox denies.
Opening arguments in the five-week trial are expected to begin on Monday.
The jury will be drawn from New Castle County, Delaware, where Democrats outnumber Trump’s GOP members more than two-to-one, according to the state’s election department. Democratic President Joe Biden represented Delaware in the US Senate from 1973 until 2009.
Fox News and its conservative commentators have been generally supportive of Trump during his presidency.
The political make-up of the boycott is likely to “make the defense nervous, but left-leaning people also tend to favor a free press,” said Melissa Gomez, president of MMG Jury Consulting.
In Delaware, attorneys are not allowed to speak directly with prospective jurors. Instead, Supreme Court Justice Eric Davis — who is presiding over the case — will cross-examine them behind closed doors, using questions agreed upon by both sides, including whether the prospective jurors “worked in a newsroom” and whether they “regularly watched any of the Fox News Programs”.
If a prospective juror answers “yes,” Davis may ask follow-up questions.
After the judge has identified 36 potential jurors, they will be brought into the courtroom and attorneys for each side will receive six “severe strikes”, in which they can fire a potential juror without giving a reason for doing so.
The streamlined process allows for faster jury selection than in some other states: Davis allotted two days.
But it also means that both sides will have more difficulty trying to determine potential jurors’ political views, which might be relevant in this case, Gomez said.
“If you have a juror who thinks the election was stolen, that will influence his position,” Gomez said. “Would the facts of the case really matter to them if they had this basic belief?”
Questions are limited to the prospective jurors’ experience rather than their positions.
Questions that reflect the attitudes of potential jurors are more likely to predict how lean the juror will be in the case, according to Christina Marinakis, jury advisor and strategy at IMS Consulting and Expert Services.
“So you’re kind of shooting blind when it comes to jury selection,” Marinakis said.
Davis on Wednesday punished Fox News, giving Dominion a new chance to collect evidence after Fox withheld records until the eve of the trial, according to a source familiar with the case who was present during Wednesday’s court hearing.
The source said Davis said he would very likely turn to an outside investigator to investigate Fox’s late disclosure of the evidence and take whatever steps were necessary to rectify the situation, which he described as troubling.