By: (AP) A newspaper asked a federal judge Tuesday to throw out a request that it investigate whether a staffer got a phone call from a juror during the death penalty trial of an escaped convict.
Media "are not to be annexed as investigators," The Greenville News attorney Jay Bender told Judge Joe Anderson.
Defense attorneys for Branden Basham, convicted last month of the kidnap and slaying of victim Alice Donovan, think a conversation between a juror and reporter should warrant a new trial, and want a newspaper representative to testify about the phone call.
Jury forewoman Cynthia Wilson already testified she had a lengthy conversation with a television station employee. According to phone records, the paper was one of five news organizations contacted by Wilson before Basham was sentenced to die for his role in Donovan's death.
Basham was convicted before Wilson made the calls.
Besides contacting several TV stations and the (Spartanburg) Herald-Journal, Wilson called other jurors during different stages of the trial, defense attorney Greg Harris said. Some calls came on days when Basham acted disruptively in court, he said.
Basham was not in court Tuesday because he refused to wear a monitoring device, a marshal testified.
Basham and Chadrick Fulks, who also was sentenced to death in the case, escaped from a Kentucky jail in November 2002 and went on a two-week crime spree through several states. Both men also are charged in the death of West Virginia college student Samantha Burns.
Prosecutors have argued Basham shouldn't get a new trial because Wilson contacted the media to ask why they weren't covering the trial. There's no evidence she was influenced by the conversations with the media or other jurors, whom she probably befriended during the trial that spanned several months, assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Schools said.
"We've really turned this mole hill into a mountain," Schools said.
The judge didn't say when he would rule.
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