1.Change-of-Venue Motion and Ruling
10 linesMay 13, 2019.
THE COURT: Do we need to put anything on the record this morning, anything before the jury comes in. If y'all want to do anything on the record about anything before they came in.
RICK HUBBARD: Your Honor, there were a couple of jurors that I had asked you to reconsider based on what their schedules were and I can go into that.
THE COURT: What do you have, Mr. Young.
BOYD YOUNG: We have one Juror to address and I need to put some stuff on the record regarding change of venue.
THE COURT: Okay. Let's do the change of venue first and then we will address the jurors.
RICK HUBBARD: Yes, sir.
BOYD YOUNG: Your Honor, through our record, my understanding is we had approximately 74 out of the 163, 5 people who stood up on Monday a couple of weeks regarding their exposure to pretrial publicity about the case. During voir dire it looks we talked to 54 of those 74 jurors and the vast majority of those jurors were subsequently disqualified or found not qualified by Your Honor. With 17 of the 54 that we talked to were eventually found qualified in the pool of 50. Based on those numbers and the fact that the vast majority of people who had exposure to pretrial publicity were disqualified we would renew our change of venue motion.
THE COURT: I think about halfway through, if I am remembering right, my questions to the jurors, in spite of any information, publicity, social media, regular media, my publication, anything cause you to form an opinion. If someone answered in the affirmative they were excused, period. If they hadn't we would move forward. So respectfully I think the way the Court presented the influence of any pretrial information, publicity, otherwise was appropriate and even actually, I think the Solicitor asked me to, can you please set that opinion aside. I did not do that on a single Juror and moved forward with all the ones that had no opinion. So respectfully your request for venue change is denied. Your record is protected on that. I think your statistics are about right. About half of them stood up and a large majority of them came through.
BOYD YOUNG: For Your Honor's information, my understanding is, after we go through selection I need to renew it again to be protected on the record.