Starting Monday morning, three of four defendants in the murder of Hall County Sheriff's Deputy Nicolas Blane Dixon will go on trial in Hall County Superior Court.
Dixon, a three-year veteran of the department, was shot and killed in the line of duty on July 8, 2019 as he and other law enforcement officers chased four suspects in what was believed to be a stolen vehicle along Jesse Jewell Parkway in Gainesville. Defendant Brayan Omar Cruz has had his case severed, but the other three - London Clements, Hector Garcia-Solis and Eric Velasquez - will be tried for malice murder and a list of other offenses in Dixon's death.
Jury selection is the first order of business on June 21, and according to Jason Stephenson, Court Administrator for the Northeastern Judicial Circuit, that process could take awhile.
Stephenson said Judge Jason Deal, who is presiding over the trial, summoned 600 potential jurors.
"Obviously we don't get all of those," Stephenson said in an interview Friday afternoon. "The process has been ongoing with our Clerk of Courts Office. They've already done much of the groundwork to qualify those jurors."
Stephenson said some of that pre-screening of jurors includes answering concerns about how the courts are preventing the spread of COVID, even as the pandemic is on the downturn. The judicial health state of emergency was lifted just over a week ago, but there are still some precautions in place.
"One of the biggest things we're still doing is limiting the number of people [in the courthouse] at any one time," Stephenson said. "So, rather than calling in 200 jurors, which we might have done pre-pandemic, we're bringing them in in waves with staggered report times and most of those pools beginning on Monday...will have a bout 25 jurors here at a time."
Stephenson said he was unsure how long the jury process would take, but he said the overall trial could last as long as three weeks.
At one point, the court had reserved the Ramsey Center at Lanier Technical College for the trial, but the suspension of the health emergency meant a return to the courthouse. Judge Deal will use the courtroom of Judge Kathlene Gosselin for the proceedings, since it has more space. Still, Deal wants to limit the number of people in the courtroom at one time. To that ends, members of the media are being asked to pool resources. Community members who want to view the proceedings are being asked to watch the live stream from the courthouse.
"Hall County commissioners very helpfully provided some funding during the pandemic to upgrade the courtrooms with new evidence presentation systems," Stephenson said. "Among the upgrades are live streaming capabilities, so since March, when we resumed live jury trials, we've been live streaming all of our trials. ... That makes it a lot easier both for public access and the transparency of the judicial process."
Stephenson said the courts are aware that this trial in particular is important to the community, and he said both sides have been waiting for their day in court.
"We are very aware in the judicial system of the weight and gravity of any proceeding," Stephenson said. "In resuming jury trials, what we are prioritizing are the most serious of cases that we have in our backlog."
Follow this link to find the live stream for next week's trial.
