Seating the jury in George Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial is taking a little longer than most legal analysts anticipated.
On Wednesday, lawyers for Zimmerman and the state of Florida began whittling down a group of 40 prospective jurors — those who weren’t eliminated from last week’s process, the Associated Press reports.
Twenty-seven of the 40 potential jurors are white, seven are black, three are mixed race and three are Hispanic. Twenty-four are women and 16 are men, the AP reports. The final group of jurors will include of six jurors and four alternates.
The racial and ethnic makeup of the jurors is particularly relevant, given the allegations against Zimmerman. Prosecutors have argued that the neighborhood watch volunteer racially profiled Trayvon Martin when he followed and later shot the black 17-year-old in a Sanford, Fla. gated community last year.