Published: Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Jury selection is expected to begin Monday in the case of an Eastlake man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend by purposely running her over.
Todd O’Brien, 25, is accused of backing over 23-year-old Kayelee Russell-Martin with his Chevrolet Malibu June 15 in Painesville Township.
O’Brien will stand trial on 13 counts — aggravated murder, failure to stop after a crash, aggravated vehicular homicide, two counts of murder, three counts of violating a temporary protection order and five counts of felonious assault.
His attorneys are expected to argue O’Brien accidentally ran over Martin after a man at the scene pepper-sprayed the defendant while he was driving.
Prosecutors are expected to call up to six expert witnesses — including a Lake County Crime Lab employee who would testify that the pepper spray was deployed only on the outside of O’Brien’s vehicle, Assistant Lake County Prosecutor Mark Bartolotta said Monday during a final pretrial hearing in Lake County Common Pleas Court.
Judge Eugene A. Lucci expressed surprise when Aaron Baker, one of O’Brien’s four attorneys, said he does not have an expert witness to dispute the state’s pepper spray evidence.
“I find it interesting that if that’s a big issue in the case, you didn’t retain your own expert,” Lucci told Baker.
Normally, Lucci calls 50 people for jury selection. In this case, he said letters went out to about 125 potential jurors because of an abnormal amount of pretrial publicity.
Twelve people will be chosen for the jury, plus four alternates.
Lucci said he already has excused about 25 potential jurors on his own.
“We’ve lost a number of jurors for their vacations,” said the judge. “You’ve got a couple teachers in there who said that (serving on a jury) would be an unreasonable request at the end of the grading period.”
Others were excused because of surgery and other medical issues. One woman was dismissed because her daughter was kidnapped and murdered and she did not want to be in a courtroom.
Lucci refused to mail out a lengthy questionnaire that was prepared by O’Brien’s attorneys for the 100 remaining potential jurors.
“I estimated it would take each juror between four and eight hours to complete the questionnaire,” the judge said. “Twenty or 30 pages asking for narrative answers on almost every page — including all the books they’ve read, all the movies and TV programs they watch — that type of questionnaire would be reasonably calculated to scare every juror out of their wits.”
Instead, Lucci will have the jury pool fill out a short questionnaire he approved himself.
Because of fire code restrictions in the court room, the potential jurors will be put under oath and then fill out their forms in an assembly room at the nearby Lake County Administration Building.
Neither the defense nor prosecutor objected to Lucci’s questionnaire, which will ask basic questions such as whether anyone has heard of the defendant through media reports or discussed the case — even online. Other questions include whether they know any potential witnesses listed.
Lucci has allowed O’Brien — who remains in Lake County Jail on a $1 million bond — to wear street clothes when he goes to trial.
Opening arguments are not likely to begin until the jury is bused to the Cambridge Condominiums complex, where Martin was struck.
Martin lived at the complex with her and O’Brien’s 4-year-old son, Alex.
Martin, her son and her boyfriend went for a walk in the complex the day she was killed.
Earlier in the day, Martin called 911, claiming O’Brien drove by and tried to hit them.
Martin sent her son to stay with a neighbor the day she died.
Martin had previously accused O’Brien of stalking her, and he was not allowed within 500 feet of her.
The jury view is expected to happen as early as Nov. 30.
O’Brien’s attorneys said the trial could last up to three weeks.
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