Stanley P. Brozana Jr., 72 – Served 37 Years as Orwigsburg Police Chief
The attorney representing accused murderer Lamour Branch believes her client can’t get a fair trial in Schuylkill County and recently petitioned for a venue change.
Ashley Sabol, from the Schuylkill County Public Defenders Office, filed a Motion to Change Venue on Jan. 9. In her petition, Sabol says a combination of persistent media attention – including one example of what she labeled as a “highly prejudicial” article – and comments on articles published to social media show that the jury pool has been tainted to a point where an impartial panel of 12 jurors can’t be found here.
Sabol’s motion includes more than 70 pages, well over half of which is printed articles and social media comments from local media accounts of the events that have transpired around the deaths of Hunter Mock and Angelito Caraballo, the New Philadelphia teens whose bodies were found in October 2023 in a wooded area near the borough known as The Sanchez.
No Coal Region Canary articles are included in her petition but Facebook comments attached to this site’s articles are part of the motion which she says show bias from the public toward her client.
Branch has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of third-degree murder along with numerous other related offenses in the deaths of Mock and Caraballo. He was arrested on those charges last year following a lengthy investigation.
“The pivotal question in determining whether an impartial jury may be selected is not whether prospective jurors have knowledge of the crime being tried or have even formed an initial opinion based on the news coverage they had been exposed to but, rather, whether it is possible for those jurors to set aside their impressions or preliminary opinions and render a verdict solely based on the evidence presented to them at trial,” Sabol writes.
She continues, “Defense Counsel has shown through all of the articles attached that the publicity revolving around this case has been so extensive, sustained, and pervasive that the community must been deemed to have been saturated with it. Namely, press coverage has been so pervasive and saturating because the stories, along with their headlines, have implicated Defendant before the investigation was complete and anyone charged.”
Sabol predicts that the publicity surrounding this case won’t slow down as it inches closer to a trial. She asks the Schuylkill County Court of Common Pleas to move the trial to an area that is not within the regular coverage area of TV stations WNEP, WBRE, and WFMZ as well as the (Pottsville) Republican Herald and PaHomepage.com.
Schuylkill County District Attorney Mike O’Pake tells The Canary, “I wasn’t very surprised because there was a lot of pre-trial publicity but we’re prepared to defend it.”
O’Pake says he can’t determine right now if impartial jurors can be found in Schuylkill County. That can only be known during the jury selection process.
“You’re not going to know until you ask the jury the questions but I feel you can,” he says.
A hearing on Sabol’s motion is currently scheduled for Feb. 28.
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