NEWS

Hit man revelation upends Richmond Hill trial jury selection

Robert King
robert.king@indystar.com

South Bend — The entire first-day pool of prospective jurors were excused from the trial of Richmond Hill explosion suspect Mark Leonard after most said they believe he is guilty.

Many of the 56 prospective jurors from St. Joseph County said they were influenced by media coverage of the fatal November 2012 explosion and Leonard's subsequent arrest in an arson-for-insurance money scheme.

But the tipping point for many others came when Leonard's lead defense attorney, Diane Black, mentioned that Leonard had been accused of hiring a hit man to kill a witness. From that point on, juror after juror said they would presume Leonard guilty from the outset.

Jury selection will resume again Friday with another 70 prospects, but the issue is likely to delay the start of the trial, which was scheduled to begin Monday.

"We're starting out (tomorrow) as if today didn't happen," St. Joseph Superior Court Judge John M. Marnocha said.

Until Thursday, Black and her defense team had attempted to ensure jurors never heard about the hit man. They said it would prejudice jurors to the point that they couldn't give a fair hearing to the rest of the case. But the judge has repeatedly said the evidence couldn't be excluded just because it is damaging.

Indeed, lead prosecutor Denise Robinson said the attempt to hire a hit man should be part of Leonard's trial because state law allows such after-the-fact of the crime issues to be used to prove the identity of the guilty party, their motive and their awareness of their guilt.

So, in what one juror described as a "shrewd move" and others suggested was meant to taint the jury pool, Black brought up the matter of the hit man for hire during the jury selection, describing it as the "elephant in the room." It was out of her mouth before Robinson had time to object. And once it was out — and all 54 first-day prospective jurors heard it — it was impossible to take back.

Soon, nearly half the jury pool was telling the court they thought Leonard was guilty. By day's end, the judge assumed he would get the same result with the rest of the pool and sent them all home, excused from duty.

The judge said in court that he saw through the defense's tactic. And outside the courtroom, Robinson said the defense's introduction of evidence during jury selection — something generally frowned up — was a surprise. "Clearly," she said, "it had a chilling effect on the selecting of a jury."

Heading to her car after the day's business in court concluded, Black said it wasn't her aim to taint the jury pool. "It's not a ploy," she said. "It's a legal issue."

The judge said he would keep a tighter rein over the questioning of the jury on Friday.

Immediately after that revelation, prospects that included a surgeon, a biology professor, a former journalist and two college students — most who previously said they would try to give Leonard a fair shake — began to express deep reservations. They weren't sure they could still be objective in the trial of the suspect that prosecutors say was the mastermind behind the explosion that killed two people, injured dozens of others and damaged or destroyed 80 homes.

"This makes this whole thing a travesty to me," said Juror No. 14, a surgeon who was not identified by name. "Are we just going through the motions?"

The surgeon said he was used to compartmentalizing the difficult work in the operating room from the suffering of his patients. But he admitted that knowing what suffering looks like — and knowing what Black had revealed about the hit man — made compartmentalizing a jurist's duty to be fair almost impossible.

"In the jury box," he said, "it is a lot different."

Leonard is the first of the Richmond Hill defendants to be brought before a jury. His case was moved to South Bend in St. Joseph County out of concern that the extensive publicity in Indianapolis would make it difficult to empanel a jury that hadn't formed an opinion.

Most juror prospects said they had seen media reports. And though they may not have known any of the victims, what happened that night in November 2012 in a Southeastside Indianapolis neighborhood clearly resonated here.

"You see pictures from the air and it looked like Beirut, Lebanon, or Iraq," Juror 14 said. "This is Indiana. It was insane."

Another juror likened the blast crater — left from the gas explosion — as being akin to the footage from the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Leonard is charged with two counts of murder and more than 40 counts of arson in connection with the explosion that also injured about a dozen people, and damaged or destroyed about 80 homes.

Leonard, his half-brother Robert Leonard, ex-girlfriend Monserrate Shirley, and Mark Leonard's former employee Gary Thompson are accused of conspiring to blow up Shirley's home in the Southeastside subdivision of Richmond Hill to collect insurance money to pay for mounting gambling and credit card debts and Shirley's heavily mortgaged home.

Shirley pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for agreeing to testify for the prosecution.

In another important development, one key audio recording will be allowed by the judge in Leonard's trial. What the judge called the "gruesome" nature of the audio recordings and autopsy photos of the two victims, John Dion Longworth and Jennifer Longworth, had become a contentious issue at Wednesday's pretrial hearing.

While the horrific nature of the Richmond Hill explosion wasn't new to many of the jurors, several jury prospects told the court that Black's revelation about the hit man — widely reported in Indianapolis months ago — was news to them.

Despite Thursday's lost day of jury selection and the media exposure to the case, both legal teams said they think they will still be able to get a jury in St. Joseph County. The next few days will tell.

Call Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter at @RbtKing.