Possible jurors were questioned by prosecutors and defense attorneys in the retrial of Cory Batey, a former Vanderbilt Football star once convicted of rape, but ended with no jury being selected.
Potential jurors were told to return for a second day of question on Thursday.
The high-profile nature of the Vanderbilt Rape Retrial has resulted in most of the 103 potential jurors being dismissed during the initial phase of jury selection in Chattanooga.
By days end, 85 jurors had been dismissed, and by mid-afternoon, a smaller pool of about 60 people were seated inside the third floor jury selection room of the courthouse.
Prosecutors asked each jurors individually if they had ever been the victim of rape, they were also warned that the trial they are potentially being selected for would involve seeing graphic video of that female student allegedly being raped by Cory Batey and Brandon Vandeburg who is now being tried separately.
Unable to select a jury by 5:30pm EST, Judge Monte Watkins sent those summoned home for the night under the condition they avoid local news media.
Jury selection will begin at 9am EST on Thursday and was expected to be completed by noon.
Judge Monte Watkins moved jury selection to Hamilton County after a mistrial was declared in the case against Brandon Vandenburg and Cory Batey last year -- after it was discovered the jury foreman lied under oath about being the victim of sexual assault.
But in large part because of social media and the Internet, a majority of the juror pool appeared to already have been tainted by previous accounts of the first trial.
When asked if he had formed an opinion of the case against Cory Batey, who was sitting in court, one man told the judge, "12 other jurors already decided he was guilty. This is a complete waste of taxpayer money."
That man was promptly dismissed.
As expected each individual juror was asked if they've ever been the victim of sexual assault or known someone who had an experience with sexual assault. The direct line of questioning comes after the initial conviction against Cory Batey and another former football player Brandon Vandenburg were thrown out, after it was discovered that a juror in the first trial lied about being the victim of rape prompting a mistrial.
Jan Norman, an assistant district attorney for Davidson County was concise as she said to the panel of pontential jurors, "It is critical that you tell the truth."
Jurors were also told they would need to see video of graphic nature, alluding to the cell phone video which shows the victim in the case allegedly being raped by Batey back in 2013 inside a dorm room.
Defense attorneys for Cory Batey directed their line of questioning along more controversial lines.
"This case deals with a black man and a white woman. Lets talk about race and let's be honest," defense attorney Courtney Teasely told the jury pool.
Jury selection was expected to take a second day and will likely wrap up Thursday in Chattanooga.
In a move to likely buy more time, Cory Batey tried to fire his attorney, Worrick Robinson, before jury selection began.
"Batey asked me to step down as his council this morning," Robinson told Judge Monte Watkins.
But Judge Watkins refused to let Robinson step aside.
"It's too late for that," the judge said.
The move came after a motion to delay the trial once again was denied by Judge Watkins.
Batey's attorneys asked for the second time in a week to delay the trial which has been scheduled to start April 4 in Nashville. They argued they needed more time to prepare after Judge Watkins ruled Tuesday to sever the cases of Vandenburg and Batey.
"I'm not opposed to picking a jury today," Batey's co-council Courtney Teasley told the court. "But if we do not grant some continuance, we run the possibility of running this case a third time. We're being forced to moved forward," she said, adding that her defense strategy will be different now that Batey and Vandenburg are no longer being tried together.
"They've been connected at the hip the entire time," speaking about both men during the first trial in which they were convicted of rape.
The judge though, citing the immense amount of resources that have already gone in to selecting a jury from another county, denied the motion.
"We need to move forward, and we will move forward," the judge said.
