Pool of 400 potential jurors to be reserved

Jury selection expected to begin Jan. 7 in M-L death penalty case

The jurors for the new trial of a former Perry Township man accused of raping and murdering a Mentor woman will be whittled down from a list of 400.

Questionnaires are expected to be sent out to potential jurors in November and the jury selection process is expected to begin Jan. 7 in Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Eugene Lucci’s courtroom.

Joseph Thomas, now 33, was sentenced to death in 2012 after being found guilty in the death of Annie McSween.

The 49-year-old victim’s body was found on Nov. 26, 2010, in

a wooded area outside of a Mentor-on-the-Lake bar, where she worked as a bartender.

The Ohio Supreme Court overturned Thomas’ death sentence in October 2017 and ordered a new trial be scheduled for Thomas.

The high court determined the trial court improperly admitted into evidence five knives that prosecutors knew were not used in the crime, and that there was a reasonable probability that the error affected the outcome of the trial.

Lucci said he’s proposing to reserve potential jurors from the pool now because he also has two other murder cases to be tried in the coming months and a medical malpractice also on the docket, which could need a large pool of jurors.

The judge has a pool of 2,500 jurors altogether. Jury pools are selected annually on the Monday before Thanksgiving. Judges request the jury pool they’ll think they’ll need for the year. Lucci, however, was not anticipating having the Thomas trial when he was making his selection.

Thomas’ second trial was scheduled to begin Aug. 13 in front of Lake County Common Pleas Judge Richard L. Collins Jr., who presided over the original trial. However, after attorneys requested additional time, the case was reassigned to Lucci since Collins will be retiring at the end of the year.

Lucci said he thinks his jury pool will be sufficient for the year, but if he does run out, he’d rather it be on another case.

The jury pool was among the issues discussed at the third pretrial hearing in the Thomas retrial case, held May 30 in Lucci’s courtroom.

The next hearing is slated for June 15. On that same date, Thomas’ attorneys are expected to file 50 motions. Those motions are broadly broken into three groups pertaining to discovery, trial and mitigation/ sentencing.

Given the volume of the filings, the prosecution will be given extra time—eight weeks instead of the usual two—to respond to the motions.

Their responses will be due in tiers: three weeks for the first group, three weeks for the second and two weeks for the third.

Lucci said at a previous hearing he is setting aside eight weeks for the trial.

NEWS-HERALD FILE Defense attorney David Doughten talks to Joseph Thomas before the sentencing phase of his trial in Lake County Common Pleas Court in October 2012.