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Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Poisoning trial lawyers sift through potential jurors
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pretrial publicity and the death penalty remained the big issues in Day 2 of jury selection in the trial of Lynn Turner, a former Cobb County 911 operator accused of killing two lovers.
On Tuesday, prosecutors and Turner’s defense team continued to comb through a list of 600 potential jurors for Turner’s trial in the 2001 antifreeze poisoning death of Randy Thompson, a Forsyth County firefighter and the father of her two children.
By late Tuesday afternoon, six potential jurors made it through extensive, one-on-one questioning by the attorneys and were deemed qualified to serve.
But 15 others were ruled out, about half because of their knowledge of pretrial publicity surrounding Turner’s case.
A handful of others were eliminated because of their views on the death penalty. A couple others were disqualified because of health problems.
Forsyth County District Attorney Penny Penn is seeking the death penalty for Lynn Turner, 38, in Thompson’s death.
Turner already is facing life in prison for killing her husband, Maurice Glenn Turner, in 1995, also with antifreeze.
Forsyth County has budgeted $150,000 for Lynn Turner’s trial, even though prosecutors and her attorneys aren’t convinced they can find an unbiased local jury.
Lynn Turner’s trial in Glenn Turner’s death had to be moved from Cobb County to Houston County in Middle Georgia because of pretrial publicity.
With themes of poison, sex, murder and money, Turner’s case has drawn national attention. National TV shows flocked to cover the first trial, which like this one will focus on the similarities in both men’s deaths.
Both men were law enforcement officers when they became romantically linked to Lynn Turner. Both men died in their early 30s. Their deaths were initially attributed to the same natural cause: cardiac dysrythmia, or an irregular heartbeat.
It wasn’t until Thompson died —- nearly six years after Glenn Turner - that authorities learned that the two men shared a common bond: Lynn Turner.
Following each of their deaths, Lynn Turner collected thousands in insurance and pension benefits.
In the summer of 2001, Glenn Turner’s body was exhumed from his Marietta grave, and his tissues and Thompson’s were retested. Both men were found to have died from ethylene glycol, the colorless, odorless, sweet-tasting chemical in antifreeze.
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