Jun 2, 2008 10:42 am US/Eastern
Defense: Juror Questions Unfair In Entwistle Trial
WOBURN (AP) ―
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Neil Entwistle in court on Monday.
WBZ
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Rachel and Lillian Entwistle.
AP
A lawyer for a British man accused of killing his wife and baby complained Monday that the judge was hurting the defense's ability to pick an impartial jury by not allowing them to ask potential jurors their feelings about the man's alleged use of Internet sex sites.
Neil Entwistle, 29, is charged in the fatal shooting of his 27-year-old wife, Rachel, and their 9-month-old daughter, Lillian Rose, in their Hopkinton home in 2006. He has pleaded not guilty.
Entwistle's lawyer, Elliot Weinstein, complained that Judge Diane Kottmyer was not allowing the defense to fully probe potential jurors about what they've read and heard about the case in news reports.
"Our concern here is that the questioning that the judge is doing is designed not to elicit the jurors' attitudes, but to foreclose the jurors from articulating their attitudes, and that's a problem," Weinstein told reporters during a break.
Weinstein also protested the judge's denial of his request to ask potential jurors how they feel about Entwistle's alleged visits to Web sites used for escort services and to connect people looking for sex. Prosecutors claim Entwistle trolled the Internet looking for sex in the weeks before the killings.
Earlier Monday, Entwistle's lawyers and prosecutors began the process of weeding through 170 potential jurors in Middlesex Superior Court. A jury of 12 jurors, plus four alternates, will be chosen for the trial, which is expected to last about three weeks.
Entwistle told police he returned home from errands to find his wife and daughter dead on the morning of Jan. 20, 2006. Entwistle said he flew home to England after the killings to be comforted by his parents, but prosecutors say he fled after shooting his wife and daughter.
Prosecutors say Entwistle shot them after becoming despondent about his family's deteriorating financial situation and dissatisfied with his sex life.
The case has received widespread media attention both in the United States and Great Britain. As jury selection got under way, it became clear many potential jurors had read or heard about the case from news reports.
One woman was excused by the judge after she wrote on her juror questionnaire that she believed the evidence was "stacked up" against Entwistle and acknowledged under questioning from the judge that she would have difficulty presuming that Entwistle was innocent until proven guilty.
Another woman was excused after she said she was troubled by the "nature of the crime."
"I think I could be fair, but the fact that an infant is involved -- I'm not sure," she said.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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