VERO BEACH — Jury selection ran into the third day Thursday in the first-degree murder case of accused killer Michael David Jones — and the process is showing zero sign of a quick conclusion.
As it stands now, Judge Dan Vaughn is asking jurors who have not already been eliminated for cause or unavailability to serve to be prepared to return Thursday, Oct. 10 to begin the trial. Originally the parties had hoped to begin opening arguments on Monday after four full days of questioning the jury pool.
Jones is accused of killing his 26-year-old girlfriend Diana Duve by manual strangulation in June 2014 and leaving her body in the trunk of her car in a Melbourne Publix parking lot.
The portion of seating a jury that seems to be taking the longest is the exhaustive questioning by Jones’ defense team of potential jurors about their attitudes toward and beliefs about the death penalty.
Using hypothetical case scenarios, prospective jurors are being asked to probe what factors they would consider as aggravators, making the crime of premeditated murder worse, and mitigators that would sway them toward a life sentence as opposed to the death penalty.
Should Jones be convicted at the end of what is expected to be a four-week trial, all 12 jurors would need to vote unanimously to impose the death penalty. If even one juror voted for life in prison with no prospect of parole, the sentence imposed would be life, not death.