Opinion ID: 2975118
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Change of Venue/Continuance

Text: Foley argues that the trial court violated his rights to a fair trial, an impartial jury, and due process of law when it denied his motion for a change of venue or a continuance. He alleges that because of pretrial publicity, the overwhelming majority of prospective jurors knew about the case before coming to court, over thirty percent had already formed an opinion that Foley was guilty and at least one such person sat on the jury, and prospective jurors knew about the four other murder charges pending against Foley. As an alternative to a change of venue, Foley requested a continuance so the publicity could abate over time. In support of his motion for a change of venue, Foley filed over 200 pages of exhibits and affidavits, including articles from two state wide newspapers and four regional papers dated from August 23, 1991, to August 13, 1993. The first articles reported Foley’s arrest for the Vaughn murders. The Laurel County District Court entered an order on August 23, 1991, prohibiting law enforcement and court personnel from disclosing information about the case. Other articles published in the fall of 1991 provided additional information about Foley, including his status as an FBI informant and the fact that this status kept him from being jailed on charges pending in Ohio at the time of the Vaughn killings. Articles stated that Foley was linked to earlier assaults and deaths. No. 04-5746 Foley v. Parker Page 6 In October 1991, authorities recovered four bodies from property in the Bald Rock community of Laurel County, Kentucky. The bodies were covered in lime and placed in a septic tank, and the tank was capped with cement. Several newspaper stories linked Foley to these murders. In different articles, the Lexington Herald-Leader gave witnesses’ accounts of both the Vaughn killings and the septic tank murders and asserted that Foley was linked to a total of nine killings. Additional stories followed in November 1991. The Laurel County Circuit Court extended the earlier gag order to the septic tank case by order entered November 8, 1991. Press coverage subsided until the fall of 1992. Several papers carried a story about a search for a fifth victim at the Bald Rock site and the discovery of two leg bones evidently planted as a hoax. The articles mentioned Foley and the Vaughn case. In January 1993, newspapers reported that a date was set for trial in the Vaughn case. That same month, reporters covered a civil lawsuit filed by members of the Vaughn family against the FBI. That case also appeared in the news in May 1993. In late May 1993, the London Sentinel-Echo reported on the deposition testimony of several witnesses in the two cases against Foley. The same paper published excerpts from the depositions on August 13, 1993. The trial court had ordered that the depositions remain under seal. In response to Foley’s motion, the Commonwealth argued that the newspapers had low circulation in Laurel County and that the articles mostly dated from 1991. The prosecution submitted circulation figures for the papers and estimated that less than half of the potential jury pool was exposed to the stories. (Foley was tried for the septic tank murders in April 1994. The trial court granted a change of venue, and the trial was held in Madison County, Kentucky. Foley v. Commonwealth, 953 S.W.2d 924, 928 (Ky. 1997).) State Court Decision The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s decision to deny a change of venue by a four-to-three vote. The court noted that Foley did not request a change of venue until the day before trial was scheduled to begin, that most of the newspaper articles he cited were from 1991, two years before the trial, and concluded that the articles were not so numerous or inflammatory as to render Foley’s trial unfair. Foley, 942 S.W.2d at 880-81. The Kentucky Supreme Court found that most jurors heard little more than what was in the indictment and concluded that the jurors who served had not formed an opinion regarding Foley’s guilt or innocence. The court cited Mu’Min v. Virginia, 500 U.S. 415, 427 (1991), for the proposition that the trial judge has a great deal of discretion when assessing pretrial publicity and juror contamination. Foley, 942 S.W.2d at 884. Three justices in dissent found that the trial court erred when it failed to grant a change of venue and that the ten challenged jurors were biased against Foley. Id. at 890-92 (Stumbo, J., dissenting). The dissent emphasized the number of prospective and actual jurors who knew about Foley and the crimes charged, their responses in voir dire, and what it termed the comprehensive and repetitive newspaper coverage. Id. at 890-91. District Court Decision The district court held that the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision was not unreasonable given the jurors’ attestation that they could remain impartial, the fact that publicity had abated by the time of trial, and that the jurors had little knowledge of the case and testified that any outside knowledge would not affect their deliberations. The district court acknowledged that fifteen to twenty minutes was a short amount of time to reach a verdict, but found that there was overwhelming evidence of guilt. The court reiterated that all of the jurors selected for the trial affirmed that they could be fair and impartial and concluded that the Kentucky Supreme Court’s analysis was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. No. 04-5746 Foley v. Parker Page 7