Court seeks color-blind jury

Prequalifications begin today in Boyd case to weed out racial bias
By Jamie Satterfield, knoxnews.com

Raise your hand if you are a racist. The question put to potential jurors today in U.S. District Court likely won't be that blunt, but the aim is the same: Ferret out anyone who cannot be color-blind when deciding the fate of accessory to fatal carjacking suspect Eric "E" Boyd.

It is an unusual inquiry in what U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan is already foreseeing as an uncommon method to seat an impartial jury in an inflammatory case involving a headline-grabbing crime and a resulting racial firestorm.

Boyd is standing trial beginning today on charges he helped hide Lemaricus "Slim" Davidson, the alleged ringleader in the January 2007 torture slaying of 21-year-old University of Tennessee student Channon Christian and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Christopher Newsom.

The couple was out on a date when armed suspects confronted them and demanded Christian's Toyota 4 Runner. But the carjacking quickly turned into a kidnapping, with the pair taken to a house on Chipman Street, beaten, tortured and raped. Newsom was slain first. He was shot, and his body set afire. Christian's ordeal would continue for several more hours before she was strangled and her body stashed inside a garbage can in the house.


Complete article at:
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/apr/07/court-seeks-color-blind-jury/