Judge: Ex-cop Coy’s trial will be in Franklin County
A judge has denied the request of defense attorneys representing former Columbus police officer Adam Coy to move his murder trial for the December shooting death of Andre Hill.
In a motion filed in June seeking a change of venue, attorneys Mark Collins and Kaitlyn Stephens argued that pretrial publicity would make it “impossible” to seat an impartial jury in Franklin County.
“The publicity of this incident is so pervasive it has gone beyond state and national news outlets to the voice of the public via social media,” Collins and Stephens wrote in their motion for a change of venue.
Assistant Ohio Attorney General Anthony Pierson, who is prosecuting the case, argued in a response filed July 14 that the jury selection process, known as voir dire, “provides the best test of whether prejudicial publicity has prevented obtaining a fair and impartial jury from the locality.”
The death of 47-year-old Hill, an unarmed Black man, drew both local and national outrage when it occurred not only amid nationwide racial justice protests, but in the same month as the death of Casey Goodson Jr., another Black man killed by a law enforcement officer in Columbus.
Siding with the prosecution and denying the defense’s motion, Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. Mcintosh wrote on Wednesday, “Where can the case be tried where some media scrutiny does not exist?”
Coy, 44, is free on a $1 million bond after a grand jury indicted him in February on charges of murder, felonious assault and reckless homicide for fatally shooting Hill on Dec. 22.
Coy, an officer with the Columbus Division of police, was fired within a week of the shooting, which occurred around 2 a.m. that morning on the city’s Northwest Side.
Coy and fellow Columbus police officer Amy Detweiler had been called to the 1200 block of Oberlin Drive on a nonemergency report of a vehicle repeatedly turning on and off. Hill had exited a garage at a home where he was an invited guest holding an illuminated cellphone in a raised hand when Coy shot him to death.
Collins has said that Coy fired after mistaking a set of keys in Hill’s right hand for a silver revolver, though it was later learned that Hill was unarmed.
The failure of Coy and Detweiler to turn on their body cameras until after the shooting, and their failure along with that of other officers to render medical aid to Hill for several minutes after the shooting led to a series of legislative changes by Columbus City Council. elagatta@dispatch.com @Ericlagatta