But the ritual of choosing the jury got off to a slow start as more than half of the first group of 96 potential jurors raised their hands to say they could not be fair to Mr. Trump, demonstrating the challenges of picking an impartial panel in a city where the defendant is widely loathed. The judge immediately excused them.
They openly prosecute people for handing out literature on jury nullification around court houses, and they also will consider an entire jury pool spoiled if someone declares their knowledge of jury nullification. Anecdotally there’s an Ask Reddit thread out there where someone recounts a man being hauled off for prosecution because he declared he was going to just vote guilty whatever the evidence said because he wanted to get out to pick his daughter up from school, and that judge read the bastard the riot act frontways and back over it too.