By Seamus McGraw

(Continued)

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Now, as both men are preparing to face trial, question are being raised about whether the relentless pretrial drumbeat of media coverage in both cases and in others have impaired their chances at getting a fair trial. Just hours ago, citing pretrial publicity, a judge in Florida suspended jury selection in Couey's murder trial and ordered, for the second time, that when the trial resumes, jury selection should take place in another county.

But if experience is any measure, it is unlikely that the court will be able to find anyplace in the state of Florida, or even beyond, where details of the case are not now common knowledge.

Dru Sjodin and Jessica Lunsford both became tragic icons

Certainly, that has been a concern for their defense attorneys. In April of this year, lawyers for the man accused of killing Sjodin moved to have his trial moved from a federal court in North Dakota to nearby Minnesota. In a motion filed with the court at the time and later cited in published reports, Rodriguez' attorney Richard Ney argued that two studies had shown that potential jurors in the North Dakota vicinage had in many cases developed hard opinions about the case and about the defendant, in part at least, as a result of the intense media coverage.

In one of those studies, as reported in the Bismarck Tribune, 99 percent of those questioned had heard about the Sjodin slaying, 88 percent already believed that he was guilty, and more than half said that he should face execution, that in a state that does not have the death penalty. (Because Rodriguez is being tried federally, he does face capital punishment.)

A second study, conducted between June and September of 2004 and detailed in the Bismarck Tribune found that 95 percent of the North Dakotans interviewed believed that Rodriguez was guilty and two thirds said that they did not believe they could be unbiased.

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Contact Seamus McGraw at seamusm@ptd.net

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