Nine men and seven women will serve as jurors on Aimee Bock’s trial, which will continue next Monday with opening statements about her alleged role in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud case.
The jurors include a substitute teacher in the Wayzata school district, a teacher who works with autistic students, a mental health counselor, a cardiology nurse in the M Health Fairview system and a 911 dispatcher.
Four of the 16 jurors will serve as alternates. The jurors were selected Monday after a day of questioning.
Four of the selected jurors told U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel during questioning that they had heard about the Feeding Our Future case in the news. The four also said it will not affect their ability to serve fairly on the jury.
Bock is the former executive director of Feeding Our Future, which prosecutors allege is at the center of a $250 million fraud scheme. She is on trial for charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery. She will be jointly tried with Salim Said, the former co-owner of Safari Restaurant, which allegedly took part in the scheme. Both have denied any wrongdoing.
Brasel told all jurors not to expose themselves to news of any kind between Monday and the end of trial, stressing the importance and high-profile nature of the coming trial.
“You’re going to instruct your family and friends, ‘Do not talk about it,’” Brasel said. “Read no media. Turn off all notifications.”
Brasel also told jurors to “contact court staff immediately” if “anyone tries to approach you about this case.”
The first trial in the Feeding Our Future case was held last spring, and was rocked by allegations of attempted juror bribery one day before closing arguments began.
The bribery attempt did not come up directly Monday during jury selection.
Much of the basic information about the jurors, including their ages, ethnicities and cities of residence, were not disclosed publicly. Reporters and the public were not allowed inside the courtroom Monday for jury selection, and instead watched a live video feed of the proceedings from an overflow room. The video did not show the jurors.
Brasel ordered extra precautions to protect jurors’ information in Bock’s trial in response to last spring’s bribery attempt. She allowed Bock and Salim Said to take notes on the jurors, but had them hand their notes over to their attorneys at the end of the day. Attorneys only had access to the jurors’ names on Monday, and had to hand over the list of names to the court by the end of the day.
Rarely on Monday did potential jurors express their personal opinions or beliefs as the judge, defense attorneys and prosecutors vetted them for service in the trial. Each prospective juror had completed a questionnaire before reporting to court Monday. Brasel pulled each of them aside individually and asked follow-up questions to their questionnaire responses, which usually centered on their work, education level and whether they felt they could serve on the jury fairly.
At one point, Brasel asked the juror who works with autistic students why he answered that he had “distrust for the police as a whole” but not individual police officers. He said that was influenced by “police brutality” incidents he was aware of against autistic people.
Noting that FBI agents will testify in the trial, Brasel asked the juror if he could be sure this belief “won’t spill over into this courtroom.”
“Yes,” the juror said.
At one point in the afternoon, attorneys for Bock and Salim Said briefly asked prospective jurors about their biases and opinions of the news.
Kenneth Udoibok, Bock’s attorney, brought up implicit bias, which all jurors were instructed about at the beginning of the day.
“Is there anyone here that sort of has this feeling implicitly about East Africans?” he asked. Bock is white, but the broader case involves mostly East African defendants.
No one in the courtroom raised their hand.
Prosecutors charged 70 defendants in the case, alleging that the fraud started with the Minnesota Department of Education distributing federal money to Feeding Our Future. The organization distributed the money to food venders and sites that were supposed to feed children meals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prosecutors say some organizations reported serving more meals than they did in order to receive more money. Some never served any meals at all.
Bock allegedly took just over $1 million for herself by contracting with her boyfriend for maintenance work on Feeding Our Future’s office for $900,000. She also allegedly took a $310,000 kickback in exchange for enrolling a nonprofit into the federal food-aid program.
Udoibok asked potential jurors how they felt about women working as managers, and got a similar response to his question about implicit bias.
He also noted how many of the potential jurors said they had read or heard about Feeding Our Future in the news.
“How many people here believe that what you heard or saw in the news is true, factually true?” he asked.
One of the potential jurors raised her hand.
“You think the news is always accurate?” Udoibok asked.
“That is not what you asked,” the woman responded.
Udoibok asked whether she believed what she read about Feeding Our Future in the news was true.
“I think it was a statement of fact,” she said.
“What was statement of fact?” Udoibok asked.
“I don’t know that I’m allowed to say,” the woman responded.
The woman was not selected to serve on the jury.
