Judge denies motions in Brooke Richardson murder trial скачать в хорошем качестве

Judge denies motions in Brooke Richardson murder trial

LEBANON, Ohio (WKRC) - The trial for a young woman charged with killing her newborn baby and burying it in her backyard will not be moved out of Warren County, a judge ruled Monday. Brooke Skylar Richardson, 20, is charged with aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter, endangering children, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse in the death of her baby in 2017. Richardson was scheduled for a pretrial hearing in Judge Donald Oda's courtroom Monday morning but the meeting happened behind closed doors in the Oda's chambers. Oda denied Monday a second request for a change of venue filed by Richardson's attorneys. They contend in a 156-page filing that Richardson cannot get a fair trial in Warren County because of negative pretrial publicity. The attorneys attached news stories and online comments that referred to Richardson as a "baby killer" and "Satan." "To determine if you cannot get a jury, you have to try to pick a jury," said defense attorney Jay Clark. Clark defended Ryan Widmer twice in the most high-profile case in Warren County history. Widmer was tried three times for the murder of his wife, Sarah. He was convicted in the first trial but the conviction was overturned because of juror misconduct. A second trial resulted in a hung jury and a third ended with a jury finding Widmer guilty of murder. Juries in all the trials were selected from Warren County despite a massive amount of publicity. "The last time we tried the Widmer case that was one of the things: People just hadn't paid attention," Clark said of the jurors in the case. Richardson's attorneys had also filed a motion requesting they be allowed to review grand jury testimony from a forensic anthropologist who said the body of Richardson's baby may have been burned. However, the attorneys, Charlie Rittgers and his son, Charlie, attached emails between forensic anthropologist Dr. Beth Murray and the Montgomery County Coroner in which Murray appeared to change her opinion after Richardson was indicted. Oda denied that motion as well. Clark said a motion to dismiss is typically filed in a civil case when evidence is lacking, but the procedure is different in a criminal case. "Here, if they indicted a particular charge, I guess tampering based on their understanding of certain evidence and that understanding is incorrect or flawed, somehow it's not right; you don't get to dismiss the charge. You go to trial, you make them prove it or not and you're found not guilty," Clark said of the motion. The judge also denied Richardson's request to take the jurors to her parents' home where the baby's body was found buried in the backyard in 2017. Richardson's attorneys are also asking that a can of lighter fluid found in her parents' garage be excluded from the trial along with her diary. The trial is scheduled for two weeks and will start Sept. 3. Seventy prospective jurors will be summoned to the courthouse. Richardson has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.