A prosecutor's widely expected decision to retry a former police officer on a murder charge in the traffic-stop shooting of an unarmed man came with the surprise that he wants to move the next trial out of the Cincinnati area, the Associated Press reports.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters announced plans for the request on Tuesday as he said he would try fired University of Cincinnati officer Ray Tensing on the same charges on which jurors deadlocked. A judge declared a mistrial Nov. 12 after jurors remained hung after 25 hours of deliberations. The charges are murder and voluntary manslaughter in the July 19, 2015, fatal shooting of Sam DuBose.
Deters says he wants a jury in another Ohio county, away from intense local attention.
It's very rare for a prosecutor to ask for a change of venue, usually sought by defense attorneys who think a fair and impartial jury can't be seated, legal experts say.
Jurors in the racially charged case were scared of being identified, even revolting and refusing to come out of the jury room at one point, Deters said. Prosecutors talked to some of the jurors after the mistrial, and Deters said prosecutors think the intense local attention could have "seeped into the jury room."
