It has taken lawyers two weeks to find the 12 people who will decide the fate of one of the men charged with beating Bobby Tillman to death at a party in Douglasville two years ago.

Tracen Franklin, 20, could get the death penalty if convicted. Opening statements in his trial are expected Wednesday afternoon.

Franklin was the only one of the four people charged in Tillman’s death to roll the dice. He decided to take his chances in court instead of taking a plea deal.

The death penalty is on the table for Franklin, who was 19 at the time of Tillman’s death. He and three others beat and stomped on the popular 18-year-old student outside a Douglasville home in 2010.

It looks like the other three defendants will avoid a death sentence.

Emanuel Boykins pled guilty in April to murder and throwing the punch that ignited the beating. Boykins, 20, gets life in prison but with parole.

Quantez Devonta Mallory and Horace Damon Coleman took District Attorney David McDade’s plea deal 15 months ago. But they have not pled guilty in court.

Now that the case has started, all parties involved are keeping quiet.

“It’s undescribable (sic), the pain,” Tillman’s mother Monique Rivarde told Channel 2 Action News before jury selection began. “It just gets worse as time goes by.”

On Nov. 5, 2010, everyone was at a party held for two girls at Chapel Hill High School who were celebrating good grades.

It turned into a big deal.

Only 10 people, including Tilliman, were invited. But 60 people showed up.

Tilliman was a freshman at Georgia Perimeter College. He arrived late after a program at church.

Franklin was a freshman at Alabama State, where he planned to play football. He was home for the weekend to visit his mother. Franklin and his friends decided to crash the party.

Everything was until a “mob mentality” set in after a few young women got into fights in the front yard as everyone was leaving, McDade said in April.