The selection of jury members was completed on October 9. The jury included seven white Americans, four Hispanics, and one African American. Westergren ordered that the trial would neither be televised nor taped and limited the number of reporters in the courtroom to avoid a "repeat of the Simpson circus". The trial began on October 11. In his opening statement, Valdez claimed that Saldívar "deliberately killed Selena", calling the act "senseless and cowardly" because Selena had been shot in the back. Valdez called the incident a "simple case of murder". Tinker opened his statement as though he was "describing a mystery movie" calling Quintanilla, Jr. a "controlling and dominating father, ambitious for power and money." His removal of Selena from school to sing in nightclubs and bars served "the sole purpose of making money." He infringed on his family's privacy by demanding that they live in a compound so that he could watch their every move. Tinker asserted that Selena wanted to be independent and "break from her father's control" by operating her own business. According to Tinker, after Saldívar fired the gun, she "ran after her friend to help her" by getting her into her pickup truck. He claimed that Quintanilla, Jr. called Saldívar a "lesbian obsessed" with Selena. Tinker ended his opening statement saying that Quintanilla, Jr. drove Saldívar "to near madness" by threatening to destroy her friendship with Selena.