COLUMBUS — The painstaking process of selecting a jury for the death-penalty trial of the man accused of kidnapping, raping and killing Ohio State University student Reagan Tokes is set to begin Monday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
More than 160 potential jurors will be divided into groups of six to be questioned by prosecution and defense attorneys about their attitudes about the death penalty in the trial of Brian L. Golsby.
Judge Mark Serrott said he expects the attorneys to spend up to a week eliminating those whose opinions on the topic are so inflexible that they wouldn’t be able to follow state law in determining whether death is the appropriate sentence if Golsby is convicted of a capital crime.
The attorneys also will question members of the jury pool about whether pretrial publicity about the case against Golsby will prevent them from being objective.
“This case seems to have gripped the public quite a bit,” Serrott said.
In September, defense attorneys Kort Gatterdam and Diane Menashe filed a motion seeking a change of venue for the trial. They argued that extensive pretrial publicity makes it “virtually impossible to find a prospective juror, much less 12 prospective jurors,” in Franklin County “who have not been affected in some way by the alleged facts of this case.”
Serrott denied the motion, ruling that the jury-selection process was the appropriate time to determine whether open-minded jurors can be found in Franklin County.
Gatterdam said questions about the death penalty and pretrial publicity will be the focus in the initial phase of trying to seat a jury.
“It’s weeding out whether there’s any reason why a juror can’t be objective,” he said. “Whether it’s publicity, an opinion on the death penalty, or any other reason that they have prejudged the case.”
Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, who will present the state’s case along with Assistant Prosecutors James Lowe and Jennifer Rausch, said he will be surprised if they can’t qualify enough jurors to hear Golsby’s case in Franklin County.
O’Brien said he can’t recall a change of venue being granted for a Franklin County murder case since 1979. That’s when the trials of brothers Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon, dubbed the “.22-caliber killers,” were moved to Richland and Hamilton counties.
Still, Serrott was concerned enough about pretrial publicity in the Golsby case to ask the jury commissioner to send out notices to 550 potential jurors, an unusually large pool. Of those called, 213 showed up Friday to fill out an initial questionnaire and learn that they might be needed for three or four weeks.
The judge on Friday excused 46 people who had medical or scheduling issues. That leaves 167 to be questioned.
By the end of the week, Serrott said he hopes the pool has been whittled down to 50 to 60 people from which the jury can be selected.
The trial is likely to begin the week of March 4.
In addition to seating a jury of 12, the judge and attorneys hope to seat six alternates who will be available to step in if any jurors have to drop out during the trial.
Golsby, 30, is accused of kidnapping Tokes, 21, at gunpoint as she walked to her car after her shift at a Short North restaurant on Feb. 8, 2017. The body of the OSU senior from the Toledo area was found the following afternoon near the entrance to Scioto Grove Metro Park in Grove City. She had been raped and shot twice in the head, investigators said, after being forced to withdraw $60 from an ATM.
Golsby is a registered sex offender who had been released from prison a short time earlier after serving a six-year sentence for the robbery and attempted rape of a Grove City woman. He was living in an East Side halfway house and wearing an ankle monitor with a GPS tracking device at the time of the crime. The GPS data provided investigators with crucial evidence they used to link Golsby to the kidnapping, robbery and murder scenes.
Police arrested Golsby three days after the slaying when his DNA profile matched DNA detected on a cigarette butt found in Tokes’ abandoned car.
The prosecution’s case is expected to rely heavily on GPS and DNA evidence.
Franklin County had gone without a death-penalty trial for three years before a jury in July convicted Lincoln S. Rutledge of aggravated murder for the shooting death of Columbus Police Officer Steven Smith during a 2016 SWAT standoff. Serrott sentenced Rutledge to life in prison without parole after the jury spared him from the death penalty.
A Franklin County jury hasn’t recommended a death sentence since 2003.
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