CHANCEY Luna, who was 16 when Oklahoma police allege he fired a fatal bullet into the back of Australian baseballer Chris Lane, wants a large jury pool for his murder trial so there will be more potential African American jurors.
IN Stephens County just 2.1 per cent of the population of 44,919 are African American, according to his lawyers.
Lane, a 22-year-old from Melbourne, was jogging along a residential street in the county's rural city of Duncan in 2013 when authorities say he was randomly selected and shot by Luna in a drive-by."Increasing the number of potential jurors called to jury duty for the trial proceedings in this matter would increase the likelihood of a better representative class of African Americans, relative to the total percentage in the judicial district population," Luna's lawyers, according to the Duncan Banner newspaper, argued in a motion to the judge.Luna's father is black and his mother is white.Luna and the alleged driver of the car, Michael Jones, 17 at the time of the shooting, have also asked for the trial to be moved out of Stephens County because of fears the high-profile case would be unable to find an impartial jury.Murder trials for Luna, 17, and Jones, 19, are scheduled for next month in Duncan.Both face life sentences without the possibility of parole if convicted of first degree murder.Luna has also asked to be charged as a juvenile, not an adult."The defendant contends that since he is a juvenile, the infliction of life or life without the possibility of parole, if convicted, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as condemned in the US Constitution," the motion states.Lane,who had a baseball scholarship at Oklahoma's East Central University, was visiting his girlfriend in Duncan when he was shot.A third teenager, James Edwards Jr, who was 15 when Lane was gunned down, has become a prosecution witness and faces an accessory charge.Lane's death became a racially-charged, front page story in the US, with media commentators and civil rights leaders comparing it to the 2012 Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.US President Barack Obama issued a statement soon after the shooting where he said "there is an extra measure of evil in an act of violence that cuts a young life short" and that his, and the first lady's, thoughts and prayers were with the Lane family.Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
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