Allison Robbert\/Pool via AP<\/p>\n
Nobody likes me
Everybody hates me
Guess I\u2019ll go eat worms!<\/p>\n
\u2013 20th century children\u2019s song<\/p>\n
Elon Musk<\/a> may have been contemplating snacking on a few earthworms after a brutal treatment by a jury pool in San Francisco, with almost half of the prospective jurors being disqualified because they declared their hatred for the tech CEO \u2014 one even went so far as to say he wanted to see Musk in prison.<\/p>\n The case stems from a class action lawsuit<\/a> filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by investors in Twitter, the predecessor to Musk\u2019s X platform, who allege he violated federal securities laws with his months of public indecision over purchasing the company as a scheme to drive down the the price of shares before he completed the purchase in October 2022, causing the investors financial harm.<\/p>\n According to Bloomberg Law<\/a>, the trial is expected to last about three weeks, and likely witnesses to be called to the stand include Musk and former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.<\/p>\n But before the trial can begin, a jury must be selected, and Judge Charles R. Breyer had a tougher time than usual, due to the notorious<\/a> reputation<\/a> of the defendant<\/a>.<\/p>\n Breyer, a Clinton appointee and younger brother of former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, began jury selection by commenting to the lawyers for both sides that Musk had achieved a level of fame that was \u201clike the President of the United States,\u201d and even if they \u201csearch the entire country,\u201d it would probably be nearly impossible to find someone who did not have some sort of opinion about Musk.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a public figure he will excite strong views, and for him in particular, people have strong views,\u201d Breyer added. \u201cThe question is, and courts are very clear about this, is whether they can set them aside.\u201d<\/p>\n Finding nine jurors who could put their opinions about Musk aside to be properly fair and impartial took over five hours.<\/p>\n Out of the jury pool of 93, Breyer dismissed 40 of them right off the bat when he asked who did not feel they could set aside their biases and they raised their hands.<\/p>\n The questionnaire filled out by all prospective jurors revealed many of them voiced negative opinions about Musk, the companies he owns, or his political activities connected to President Donald Trump\u2019s administration and his short-lived but highly controversial involvement<\/a> with DOGE<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to Bloomberg Law, \u201cOne prospective juror stated that he could be impartial in a civil trial, but that if this were a criminal trial he would have a \u2018moral obligation\u2019 to convict Musk and send him to prison.\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, that juror was eliminated, as were one man who said he could be impartial but in his questionnaire declared that he disagreed \u201cwith the existence of billionaires,\u201d and a woman who said she hated how Musk had conducted mass layoffs among Twitter\u2019s content moderators.<\/p>\n Stephen Broome, one of Musk\u2019s attorneys, lamented to the court that there were \u201cso many people\u201d in the jury pool \u201cwho hate him so much that we\u2019re becoming desensitized,\u201d commenting that normally, if a prospective juror said in the questionnaire they \u201chated\u201d the defendant, \u201cthere would be no question\u201d that juror would be dismissed.<\/p>\n The trial is scheduled to begin on March 2.<\/p>\n The post Almost Half of Jury Pool in Musk Trial Tossed After \u2018So Many\u2019 Said They \u2018Hate\u2019 Him\u00a0\u00a0<\/a> first appeared on Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allison Robbert\/Pool via AP Nobody likes meEverybody hates meGuess I\u2019ll go eat worms! \u2013 20th century children\u2019s song…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[214108,28,222297,11,222294,222295,222296,10204],"class_list":{"0":"post-482320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bloomberg-law","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-charles-r-breyer","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-jury-pool","13":"tag-justice-stephen-breyer","14":"tag-prospective-juror","15":"tag-twitter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}