Jury picked for AJ Armstrong's 3rd murder trial set to start Monday

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- After three weeks of jury selection in A.J. Armstrong's third capital murder trial, 12 jurors and four alternates have been chosen.

Of the 10 men and six women, there are two former Marines, engineers in the oil and gas industry, a retired teacher, a Space Center Houston worker, and therapists who work or have worked with mental health patients.

The jurors range in age from a 26-year-old man to a 65-year-old grandmother. There are four white women, two white men, four Hispanic men, two Hispanic women, two Black men, and two Asian men.

As their numbers were called, one by one, jurors filled the box of seats on Judge Kelli Johnson's right. Armstrong did not react visibly as they sat the people who will decide whether Armstrong will spend the rest of his life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 40 years.

"Twelve new, completely different wired brains with different life experiences, and so there is no way, as much as you want to, predict what is going to happen. There is no way," Steve Shellist, a legal analyst, said.

It's been nearly seven years since Dawn and Antonio Sr. were shot to death in their southwest Houston home. Hours later, Armstrong, who was then 16, was charged with murdering his parents. He's now 23 years old, still out on bond, after two mistrials.

In selecting jury number three, prosecutors and defense attorneys spent more than 150 hours questioning more than 100 potential jurors one-on-one since May 1. The intense, exhaustive, unprecedented selection process happened due to the far-reaching exposure of the case.

The goal of finding a panel of unbiased jurors proved difficult right up until the end when two jurors admitted to the judge they had heard new details about Armstrong since last being in court a couple of weeks ago.

One man said he would be unable to avoid conversations with his wife during the trial, who believed Armstrong was guilty. The second potential juror, a TV news reporter, said she would be unable to avoid newsroom conversations about the case. Both were dismissed.

"Some will follow the judge's instructions. Others will completely ignore it the minute they leave the court because we're tethered to our phones, our computers, our televisions," Shellist said when asked whether seated jurors will be able to stay away from the case during trial. "Will it influence them? Hopefully not."

Armstrong's third trial starts Monday, June 5.

See more of ABC13's seven-year coverage on A.J. Armstrong's murder trial.

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