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November 8, 2006
The John Couey Trial
Topics: NewsINVERNESS — The Miami trial for the accused killer of Jessica Lunsford is on schedule for February, after a Citrus judge rejected a defense challenge of the new venue Wednesday afternoon.
Circuit Judge Ric Howard selected the South Florida location in September after the first trial for convicted sex offender John Couey ended abruptly during jury selection in Lake County when Howard deemed it impossible to find an unbiased panel.
In court Wednesday, Assistant Public Defender Daniel Lewan argued that moving the trial to Miami in February violates a state law that says the judge should place priority on places with similar demographics to the county where the crime was committed.
Citrus is a small, mostly rural county with an elderly and 95 percent white population, Lewan argued in court, citing recent census figures. Miami-Dade is densely populated with a younger, largely minority demographic that mostly speaks a language other than English, he said.
Assistant State Attorney Peter Magrino said court transcripts clearly show that other locations were considered and he argued that the judge has wide discretion to move a trial. Demographics alone are not a sufficient argument, he said.
Howard acknowledged the differences between Citrus and Miami but also said the law gives him adequate discretion to move the trial.
He told the defense they could appeal his ruling before February. Lewan said after the hearing he had not decided whether to seek that remedy.
Howard selected Miami after two closed-door hearings aimed at keeping the new location a secret. Court officials, in the end, decided to release the details and the transcripts of the secret hearings were eventually filed in court.
The move was announced Sept. 12 by 5th Circuit Chief Judge Victor Musleh, who said finding a location with demographics similar to Citrus wasn’t practical.
“If you go to a small county, you never get a jury,” Musleh told the St. Petersburg Times. “In a large county, you have a lot of high profile cases with big publicity.”
Musleh considered Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Clearwater. He settled on Miami-Dade because it had an available courtroom and officials there are accustomed to picking juries.
Moving the trial from Lake County near Orlando was the second venue change —a rare distinction for capital murder trials that indicates the intense media attention the case is receiving. Howard decided early this year that Citrus County, where
Jessica was brutally kidnapped, murdered and raped, would not give Couey, 48, a fair trial.
Posted by admin at November 8, 2006 4:37 PM
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