Jury Selection started at 1:30 p.m. on Monday. Randall Ashauer wants an Outagamie County jury. It’s his constitutional right and defense attorneys try to preserve that right for their client by limiting pre-trial publicity.
The final jury of 12 men and women and 2 alternates was selected from a final pool of 26. 7 potential jurors said they had heard about the case through the media. Those 7 were questioned individually, two were dismissed because they said they couldn’t be impartial.
Mary Lou Robinson was very upset during jury selection. She says a benefit held last weekend for Tiffany Pohl was held in order to taint the jury pool and gin up sympathy for Tiffany Pohl. She asked the judge for a change of venue. He denied the request and she was furious. She said she doesn’t believe the jury selected is a fair and impartial jury. She thinks many of the jurors lied when asked whether they knew more about the case than what was mentioned by Judge McGinnis at the beginning of jury selection.
Mary Lou Robinson addressed the 70 or so remaining jurors and said that she hoped that if they had been less than candid, she wanted them to say so right then and there.
Then, Ms. Robinson asked the case be dismissed. Robinson says there is a witness who drove by the girls that night who saw them doing “girlie talk” and dancing around in circles, possibly on the paved portion of the roadway. Another witness claims to have seen the girls in the road. She claims that the DA’s office obtained a witness statement that exonerates her client and she only received the new information that morning. Judge McGinnis denied the request.
Mary Lou Robinson and Judge McGinnis had several heated exchanges. He told her to stop interrupting him and that a certain level of decorum had to be displayed in the courtroom. Judge McGinnis assured Randall Ashauer he would get a fair trial. We didn’t leave the courthouse until 10 p.m. The jury was selected after 7 hours. 8 women and 6 men sit on the jury.
