Jury selection completed in Winters' murder trial

A jury was seated Monday in the homicide trial of Justine Winters, after potential jurors were questioned on “publicity and prior knowledge” of a 2009 car crash that killed a pregnant mother and her teenage son.

Winter, 17, is charged with two counts of deliberate homicide. Opening arguments are scheduled to get under way at 9 a.m. today.

Jury selection in the case was more involved than usual. Winter’s attorneys had previously sought a change of venue because of media coverage of the case, but Flathead County District Judge Katherine Curtis had ruled that an impartial jury could be impaneled.

Typically between 65 and 85 citizens are called for jury selection, but in this case 100 were called Monday and an additional 75 were scheduled to show up today, if necessary, to impanel an unbiased jury.

About a dozen potential jurors did not show up for Monday’s proceedings, and about half that number were quickly dismissed in the morning after Curtis started quizzing them. 

“We are not necessarily looking for jurors who have never heard about this case,” Curtis told the first group of 30 potential jurors who were questioned. “As a juror, it’s important that you be able to set aside anything you might have heard or read about the case.”

She asked how many knew something about the case from media coverage and the Internet, and nearly the entire group of 30 raised their hands.

Curtis asked if they agreed that media coverage cannot be considered evidence and they all agreed. She asked if they agreed that what has been reported by the media may or may not be correct.

Most agreed, but not all. Former Daily Inter Lake Managing Editor Dan Black said he has followed coverage of the case and could not disregard what he knows about it.

“I’m going to have a hard time presuming [coverage] was not factual,” he said. “Because of my experience, I would tend to believe what I read in the newspaper.”

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that he be dismissed.

One man who was dismissed is friends with the father of Caden Odell, 13, who died with his mother, 35-year-old Erin Thompson of Columbia Falls in the March 19, 2009, crash on U.S. 93 north of Kalispell. Thompson was pregnant at the time of her death.

A woman said she knows two friends of Thompson and has discussed the crash and the following legal proceedings with them extensively. Because of those discussions, she said she cannot be impartial.

At one point with the initial group of 30 potential jurors, Curtis asked if anyone had knowledge of the case from Internet blogs or comments. One woman said she had read about it on a national website, but no local online news sources.

Pre-trial publicity has been an issue in the case, with Winter’s attorneys requesting a new location for the trial last year, arguing that public comments on the Inter Lake’s website in particular demonstrated that an objective jury could not be gathered in Flathead County.

Prosecutors, however, argued that inflammatory comments that were posted online were primarily the result of Winter suing Thompson’s estate. Winter claims that it was Thompson who crossed the centerline.

Judge Curtis ultimately denied the request for a new trial venue.

By the end of Monday’s proceedings, prosecutors and defense attorneys had settled on a panel of 12 jurors and two alternates.