John Locher / AP
Ammar Harris walks into court Monday, Oct. 12, 2015, in Las Vegas.
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015 | 6:54 p.m.
A jury has been picked and testimony begins Thursday in the death-penalty trial of a self-described pimp accused of triggering a fiery crash on the Las Vegas Strip by shooting into a moving car that crashed, leaving three people dead.
Jury selection ended Wednesday, with 12 jurors and four alternates picked to hear the 11 murder, attempted murder and weapon charges lodged in 2013 against Ammar Asim Faruq Harris.
Harris, 29, has pleaded not guilty. He is accused of shooting from a Range Rover SUV into a Maserati, mortally wounding an aspiring rapper with whom he had argued minutes earlier.
Prosecutor David Stanton said outside court that he plans to show video recorded from a nearby taxi of a tire-squealing car chase up neon-lit Las Vegas Boulevard, and views from other cameras of a crash and resulting fireball in front of the Caesars Palace and Flamingo resorts.
Shocked witnesses said the sports car accelerated through a red light and slammed into a taxi that burst into flames while the Range Rover disappeared into the night.
The 27-year-old Maserati driver, Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr., died at a hospital. Cab driver Michael Boldon and a tourist from Washington state, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, died in the flaming taxi.
A passenger in the Maserati was wounded in the arm but survived. Five other people were injured in several other vehicles involved in chain-reaction crashes.
The trial is expected to take several weeks. Harris' lawyers say he plans to testify.
Harris has claimed self-defense. He told The Associated Press in September 2013 that the passenger in the Maserati shot at him.
But Las Vegas police said they found no gun in the sports car.
Investigators concluded the shooting stemmed from a confrontation between a group of people at a casino valet stand following a hip-hop concert at a rented nightclub in the posh Aria resort.
Harris was convicted in the same courtroom in 2013 and sentenced to 16 years to life in prison for raping and robbing an 18-year-old woman at a Las Vegas condominium in June 2010. He is appealing the conviction.
Harris drew another sentence of two to five years after pleading guilty this year to bribing a Nevada prison guard to smuggle cellphones into High Desert State Prison outside Las Vegas.
Officials said they believed he had been plotting an escape.
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