PANAMA CITY — The animal is about 6-feet tall, with hooves and a mane, the defense attorney explained to the jury, and then she asked them which animal she was describing.
Most said horse, but a few said mule, giraffe or zebra.
"You have got a whole lot of facts that make that thing look like a horse," Jennifer Fury said. "Unless it's not."
Since Phillip Brock's first trial on a count of first-degree murder in the death of 65-year-old Terry Brazil, which resulted in a mistrial after the first jury deadlocked, his attorney Kim Jewell enlisted Fury to help with his defense. Jewell described Fury, a Bradenton attorney, as an old friend and an exceptionally competent trial attorney.
Fury carried most of the water Tuesday, the first day of Brock's retrial. She handled cross-examinations of the state's law enforcement witnesses, which were called Tuesday in order to both accommodate the schedule of the state's expert witness on DNA and to fit the trial into a week shortened by a holiday Monday. Fury also questioned potential jurors during the jury selection process.
The case against Brock is based on forensic and circumstantial evidence; as prosecutor Larry Basford told the first jury, nobody saw the crime, but deputies connected him to Brazil's home with DNA evidence and several items of Brazil's property that were found at Brock's home.
In court Tuesday, Fury said jurors wouldn't be shown enough evidence to convict Brock. The roughly 20 witnesses for the state, she said, would amount to "a whole lot of nothing. … It’s the difference between quantity and quality."
One of the several analogies Fury used to describe the jurors she was looking for was the grocery shopper who does more than open the egg carton at the supermarket; several jurors admitted they, like Fury, run their hands over the eggs inside to find broken eggs that appear intact.
It took most of the day to select the nine women and five men who will hear the case. Brock is charged with first-degree murder, which means he can opt for a jury of 12 instead of six.
Brock testified in the first trial that he and Brazil were friends and business associates who often sold things together at flea markets and sometimes had drinks together. His explanations for why his DNA was all over the crime scene and for why Brazil’s property was at his home were enough to convince at least one juror in the first trial there was enough reasonable doubt to deadlock the jury.
Judge Brantley Clark said Tuesday the trial will last until Friday.