Source: Albuquerque Journal, N.迷你倉價錢M.Aug. 16--The boy who was charged with first-degree murder for shooting his father when he was 10 years old will face justice in Valencia County later this month after a judge denied a motion Thursday that the case be tried in another county.And prosecutors can introduce a tape of the call the boy made to 911 -- in which he said he had just shot his father in the head and that he needed medical help -- because the judge also denied a defense motion to have that tape kept out.That means Benjamin Hilburn, now 14, will stand trial starting Aug. 26, making him the youngest defendant in New Mexico, and possibly the whole country, to be tried for firstdegree murder.Benjamin allegedly shot once and killed his father on Aug. 27, 2009, in Belen, where he was living with his father and younger siblings after his mother lost custody of them in a bitter divorce.Benjamin, who wore short, dark hair, glasses, a white shirt buttoned to the top and loose-fitting khaki pants, sat in silence at the defense table Thursday.He was alongside his mother, who occasionally rubbed her son's back, and his two defense lawyers during an hourlong pre-trial conference that addressed three issues:Defense attorney Donna Trujillo Dodd requested that the trial be moved to either Bernalillo or Sandoval counties because the victim, Byron Hilburn, 42, had ties to the tight-knit Valencia County community that would make it impossible for Benjamin to get a fair trial.The defense also asked that the six-minute call in which Benjamin Hilburn tells a 911 operator his father is bleeding very badly and "I shot him in the back of the head" be excluded because it should not be considered testimony since he was trying to get help for his father.The judge required both sides meet before the trial -- which is set to begin one day shy of four years after the shooting -- to shorten the defense's 60-person witness list. He said it now has multiple representati迷你倉庫es from similar agencies and paring it down would keep the trial from going on for months.In the 13th Judicial District courtroom in Bernalillo that contained only a handful of people and a few reporters, attorney William Cooley, second-chairing Trujillo Dodd, made a lengthy argument for keeping the 911 tape out. District Judge George P. Eichwald, without much explanation, said he was going to deny the motion.Next, Trujillo Dodd gave reasons the case should not be heard in Valencia County, where there would be no sympathy for Benjamin, who has since moved to Oklahoma with his family because, she said, residents questioned him relentlessly about shooting his father whenever he went to school."If we were to move the case ... we'd have a larger pool who didn't know the family and haven't heard everything that's going on," Trujillo Dodd said.Assistant District Attorney Bryan McKay said the population of Valencia County was dispersed enough that a person living in one area wouldn't necessarily know what was happening in another."The better way of doing this is voir dire," he added, meaning that lawyers can question potential jurors on their knowledge of the case and eliminate those who've already formed an opinion or have prior knowledge that would prevent them from being impartial.Eichwald said he'd ordered 100 potential jurors be set aside for consideration, a group large enough, he said, that six people could be found who were considered impartial by both sides.Valencia County is one of few jurisdictions where juries of six people, rather than 12, are empaneled. There will also be two alternates, the judge said.If convicted, Benjamin faces a sentence that could range from a year or two of probation to being held in a locked juvenilefacility until he turns 21.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) Visit the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) at .abqjournal.com Distributed by MCT Information Services儲存
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