JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

David Jungerman’s days of reckoning are underway.

On Monday, scores of potential jurors nearly filled a courtroom on the fifth floor of the downtown Jackson County Courthouse. Some of those potential jurors sat in the jury box, while most of the rest sat in the spectator benches behind the courtroom railing.

Facing the men and women in the spectator benches was an old, expressionless, 84-year-old man, who should have been — if he didn’t have the vengeful, delusional personality that he has — one of the potential jurors. But, no, that old man, David Jungerman, is the defendant in a first-degree murder case that shocked Kansas City.

He is alleged — and I have no doubt about it — to have shot a 39-year-old attorney, Thomas Pickert, a father of two children, because Pickert had demolished Jungerman in a civil trial in which Jungerman was accused of recklessly shooting a man who had been on his business property in northeast Kansas City.

The jury awarded the plaintiff $5.75 million, and from that point, Jungerman had it in for Tom Pickert.

Prosecutors allege that on the morning of Oct. 25, 2017, Jungerman sat in his van across the street from Pickert’s Brookside home and shot Pickert with a rifle minutes after Pickert had walked his two young sons to school and while he was standing in his front yard, talking on his cellphone.

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I was a bit surprised at Jungerman’s appearance as he sat in a chair at the defense table. I guess I shouldn’t have been because he was 80 when he was arrested in 2018 and now he’s four years older and has — by his own assertion — had a serious case of Covid-19.

This was the first time in years that I’d seen him out of handcuffs and dressed in anything other than an orange jumpsuit. He was wearing an open-collared, white shirt and dark slacks and had a hearing-assisted device on his right ear.

While his lead attorney, Dan Ross, questioned potential jurors, Jungerman sat impassively, looking either down or sometimes at the particular juror being questioned. At one point, Ross put his left hand on Jungerman’s shoulder while conversing with a potential juror.

The first and only time that I spoke with Jungerman was January 2018, when he was charged with a nonviolent felony in Nevada, MO. (The charge was later dropped.) That day he was animated, talkative and vigorous. Yesterday, he seemed less alert and less engaged. I think incarceration and four years’ time have taken a decided toll on him.

And yet, there we were — about 75 of us — gathered in a courtroom, with everyone focused on this feeble-looking old man who once bragged about owning nearly 200 guns, who shot three other trespassers and who once held several teenagers at gunpoint when he caught them on lake property he owns in Raytown.

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This is a heart-breaking and maddening case. Tom Pickert should still be living in Brookside with his wife and children and should be practicing law and representing people who claim they were wronged by somebody or some entity. And Jungerman, even four years ago, should have been preparing for a happy death, instead of stalking a lawyer in Brookside and shooting him with a rifle from the driver’s seat of his van.

Well…a jury has been selected. The prosecution and defense will make their opening statements Tuesday morning, and testimony will get underway.

There’s only one rightful way for this to end. That’s with the jury foreman standing up in a week or two and declaring, “Guilty,” followed by every other member of the jury uttering the same word.

Note: I will not be able to cover the trial every day, but I will get down to the courthouse as much as possible. I trust The Star, KCUR and other news outlets will cover it daily.

Kansas City owes Thomas Pickert’s family — including his parents, his children and his widow — razor-focused attention on this case.