FORT HOOD — A Fort Hood judge Monday asked jurors if they had seen media reports since being selected to weigh the fate of an Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 in a rampage here.
Some of the jurors had seen snippets of news accounts but little more, while one juror recalled a comment from his daughter.
“'Well,'” he recalled her saying, “'I guess you'll be going back soon.'”
The hearing was brief, running just under an hour. Col. Tara Osborn, the judge, focused on the jurors' media exposure as well as whether anything had come up since their selection that would preclude them from serving on the panel.
All 13 jurors said no. The Army is not identifying the jurors to prevent anyone from retaliating against them.
There are nine colonels on the panel, three lieutenant colonels and one major. Two are women, one of them African American.
A colonel, she is the jury president.
It is one of numerous security measures that have been put in place at Fort Hood, where Hasan stands charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder. He faces another 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the worst shooting of its kind at an American military installation.
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