TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade
By DAVID YONKE
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR
Jury selection was going slower than expected this morning as Lucas County Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas Osowik and attorneys for the defense and prosecution began questioning prospective jurors today in the murder trial of the Rev. Gerald Robinson.
Father Robinson, 68, was arrested in April, 2004, for the 1980 slaying of Sister Margaret Ann, whose body was found strangled and stabbed in the room next to a chapel at Mercy Hospital. He has pleaded innocent. If found guilty, he could face life in prison.
A pool of 99 prospective jurors was divided into four groups and undergoing individual questioning that will continue through tomorrow afternoon.
The court had planned to interview 21 prospective jurors in the morning and 25 in the afternoon, but only 10 had been questioned as of the 12:30 p.m. recess.
Of those interviewed, one woman, a practicing Catholic, was eliminated when the prosecution objected over her assertion that if the laws of man and the laws of God conflicted, she would follow the laws of God.