A judge on Wednesday said no to three Kansas residents who requested to have Trump voters on their jury as they're tried for attempting to bomb a mosque and a Somali refugee community.
Gavin Wright, Patrick Stein and Curtis Allen were denied their request to include voters from a Trump-voting region in Kansas in their jury pool. The three men will be tried in the city of Wichita for plotting to use truck bombs in an apartment complex with a Somali refugee population and a mosque on the day after the 2016 presidential election, in Garden City, Kansas.
The jury pool will draw from Wichita and Hutchinson, more urban areas than Garden City, but Wright, Stein and Allen wanted people who "live in rural areas and are more politically conservative," according to High Plains Public Radio. They asked to draw from 28 counties in Dodge City, located in western Kansas. District Judge Eric Melgren said that their request did not have a legal basis, and they did not show that the current jury pool areas would discriminate against Republicans.
The men are charged with conspiracy against civil rights and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, and they have pleaded not guilty. Their defense lawyers allege the men were exercising their free speech rights and right to bear arms.
The thinking behind the request, according to the lawyer, was that one area's residents have different beliefs and would be able to understand the men's motives. In one area, two-thirds of residents voted for Trump, and in the other area the men wanted to pool from, three-fourths of residents voted for the Republican, according to Mercury News.
The men were part of a group connected to the "Kansas Security Force," a local militia group, prosecutors said. According to prosecutors and a wiretap transcript they obtained, Wright said he wanted the attack on Somalis in Kansas to "wake people up," the publication added.
At the time, the government said that setting that precedent for the jury pool would "wreak havoc" and open a "dangerous door" to similar jury pool requests. The trial, which was scheduled to start in February, is set to begin on March 19 in Wichita, according to the Associated Press.
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Melina Delkic is a staff writer for Newsweek covering the guns and drugs beat.
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