Lawyer Claims Jury Pool Tainted by 'Urban Legend' Blog Posts
The lawyer for a man accused of hiding a suspect in the murder of a carjacked couple claims in a motion for a change of venue that blogs helped “outrage and taint any jury pool.”
Lawyer Philip Lomonaco of Knoxville, Tenn., claims blogs printed false allegations that the murder victims had been sexually mutilated, the National Law Journal reports. His client, Eric Dewayne Boyd, is accused of hiding the ringleader of a group that kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed the couple, who were out on a date. The suspects are black while the two victims were white.
Lomonaco wrote in his briefs that blogs “spread lies and helped create an urban legend surrounding the details of the final state of the victims’ bodies—details meant to outrage and taint any jury pool. These untruths made a heinous crime even more horrific, and has created an irreversible fog of prejudicial publicity.”
Stephen Saltzburg, chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section, told the Daily Business Review that he has never heard of a lawyer seeking a change of venue based in part on blog posts.
