Jury Selection in Grisly Brooklyn Murder Case

By JODI-ANN MALARBE

Jury selection continued on Thursday in the trial of a reputed pimp, who was charged for murder  after his girlfriend’s head, hands and feet turned up in his freezer.

Somorie Moses was arrested in January 2017 after cops found several remains of his girlfriend, Leondra Foster, on ice in his home. Moses, previously charged with concealing of a corpse and tampering with evidence, was brought in contact with the case after bags of trash found in a garbage transfer station in the Bronx were tracked back to his apartment in Flatbush.

Moses, a long-time pimp, was registered as a level 2 sex offender  in 2006, after he was busted trying to prostitute an underage girl, and acted as a solicitor for Foster, a known sex worker. During the months leading up to the murder the defendant was abusive in his relationship with Foster, according to the victim’s father, Kenneth Foster, who accused Moses of also being a sadist, “with a thing against women”.

The jury selection occurred at Kings County Supreme Court, with the presiding Judge Shillingford clearing up issues regarding access to documents the defense team and the prosecution, before bringing out the defendant, who remained present throughout the process.

Then the fifty candidates were bought into the court and sworn in by the judge and informed of the graphic nature of the case before being introduced to the defendant, his team and the prosecution.

After which the judge went into a series of questions to assess the candidates’ ability to fairly reach a decision over this case without hinderance from outside biases and conflicting issues. This involved typical questions like seeing which persons schedules would conflict with the days of the trial or if anyone had prior knowledge of the cases before entering the court.

 Prospective jurors also were asked if the gruesome details of the case would affect the their ability to serve.

The trial was expected to begin on October 30.