Jury selection under way in trial of accused serial killer Anthony Sowell

By Leila Atassi, The Plain Dealer The Plain Dealer

Plain Dealer file Anthony Sowell in court.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Eighteen months after the remains of 11 women were discovered in and around Anthony Sowell's Imperial Avenue home, lawyers will begin seating jurors today for one of the most notorious and storied serial-killing cases in the state's history.  

As many as 132 witnesses -- law enforcement officials, family members of victims, women who say they survived attacks by Sowell, even Mayor Frank Jackson and his wife -- are expected to take the stand during a trial that many anticipate will consume the greater part of the summer. 

Sowell, 51, is charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder, kidnapping, abusing a corpse and tampering with evidence in the deaths of the women, all believed to have been killed within about two years and whose remains were found in the fall of 2009.

Sowell also is accused of attacking several other women who survived.

The case, which has cost taxpayers more than any in the county's history, called for an unprecedented 1,000 prospective jurors to be summoned in recent weeks in an effort to find a panel of 12 who have been least affected by the continuous news coverage.

Sowell's defense attorneys, John Parker and Rufus Sims, repeatedly have argued that it cannot be done and have asked multiple times for a change of venue. The court would be hard-pressed, the attorneys said, to find even a dozen people in the county who could hear Sowell's case impartially after having heard the details of his criminal past, the life stories of the victims and the protests of community activists decrying violence against women.

But Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose, in denying the lawyers' requests, has said they won't know if empanelling a fair jury is possible until they try.

Parker and Sims, however, continued to argue that the court's jury selection process would lead to a biased jury.

At a recent pretrial meeting the attorneys said they learned that only 30 percent of jurors would be required to report for duty, and many already had been excused by the court without the attorneys' knowledge.

Parker and Sims filed a motion Tuesday for an entirely new jury pool or at least an accounting of the demographics of those who have been dismissed and the reasons why.

They also filed a motion asking the court to select two separate juries. One would decide on Sowell's guilt or innocence. The other, if Sowell is convicted, would be empanelled for the penalty phase. Those jurors would hear testimony on Sowell's upbringing, schooling, military career and abuse he might have suffered and determine whether he deserves the death penalty.

The defense lawyer's motion cited a Cornell Law Review study of 916 capital jurors in 11 states. That study found that many jurors had decided on the defendant's punishment before the penalty phase had even begun.

Ambrose denied both requests during a hearing Wednesday. He said the jurors who have been dismissed from the pool had legally sound excuses, and the remaining 300 would suffice.

Those people were called to report Friday , when a computer program randomly trimmed the field further to a more manageable 200, said Court Administrator Greg Popovich.

The jurors then set to work filling out a 36-page questionnaire probing their exposure to the case as well as their feelings on topics ranging from drug use to law enforcement and the death penalty.

The selection process is expected to last at least two weeks, with jurors reporting to the courtroom in waves of 30 for more intensive questioning by attorneys.

Once testimony begins, prosecutors likely will call law enforcement and coroner's officials to describe the investigation itself -- the days of exhuming bodies from shallow graves and crawl spaces, the discovery of a bucket containing a human skull in Sowell's basement and the weeks spent identifying the decomposed victims based on dental records and DNA.

Then prosecutors are expected to call several women who say they were attacked by Sowell and survived. Their testimony will help prove Sowell's motives, the pattern of his attacks and his methods of luring women to his home -- and some to their death, prosecutors said.

Most of Parker and Sim's strategy for defending Sowell against 11 counts of aggravated murder and 74 other charges remains a mystery, with many of their motions filed under seal.

But court records show the bulk of the defense team's nearly $600,000 budget has paid for resources that would only come into play during the penalty phase.

Among the expenses are fees for mental health specialists, brain scans, neurodiagnostic analysis to determine Sowell's brain functioning, and a military specialist to interpret records of his time in the Marine Corps.

The defense team hired a crime scene expert and a forensic pathologist to critique prosecutors' work. And a squad of researchers have been busily combing through thousands of medical records, school documents and hours of video surveillance footage shot from the property next door to Sowell's.

Tens of thousands of dollars also were paid to a mitigation expert -- a social researcher whose job is to find witnesses who can humanize Sowell, evoke jurors' sympathy and ultimately save him from the death penalty.

This task, the attorneys said, is the bedrock of any capital murder defense. And Parker and Sims have asked Ambrose twice in the past month for more time for their experts to wrap up their work and draft their reports.

The judge, estimating that the penalty phase would not begin until mid-July at the earliest, granted the experts until July 8 to complete their reports.

But seating jurors will begin Monday, as scheduled, Ambrose ruled -- drawing into view, after 18 months, a sense of resolution for Cleveland and the families of the Imperial Avenue women.

Related topics: anthony sowell , cleveland , common pleas judge dick ambrose , cuyahoga county common pleas court , john parker , rufus sims , serial killer

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