Change of venue denied in homicide case
Citing a lack of “inflammatory” pretrial news coverage in the first-degree intentional homicide case against Jesus Contreras Perez, Judge Daniel Diehn on Tuesday ruled that any eventual trial in the case will be heard by a jury of Clark County residents.
Diehn denied a change of venue motion filed by Claire Longdin, the attorney for Contreras Perez, who stands accused of killing and hiding the body of Cassandra Ayon of Loyal in October 2020. He said during a Tuesday hearing in Clark County Circuit Court in Neillsville that it’s not necessary that jurors have no knowledge of a case on which they may sit, only that their viewpoint of a case is not tainted to the point where they could not make an impartial decision.
Longdin provided the court with examples of area news coverage that have been printed or aired since Ayon first was reported missing by her family in early October 2020. Area newspaper, radio and television outlets have reported on the case since then, including coverage of the first-degree intentional homicide charges filed against Contreras Perez even though Ayon’s remains have not been found. The attorney called representatives of Neillsville and Wausau radio stations as witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing to show the extent of pretrial coverage in the case.
Longdin said she’s concerned that Contreras Perez cannot get a fair trial in Clark County because the potential jury pool is limited in size by the county’s relatively low population and the fact that extensive news coverage has been given to the case. Also, she said, the “uniqueness” of the case has brought more attention to it, in particular because a body has never been found.
“There’s a constant reminder to the public,” Longdin said of the ongoing news coverage. “I think it would be diffi cult to find a jury where no one has heard of this case yet.”
Longdin said the court may find it’s problematic to hold a trial in Clark County if too few impartial jurors can be found.
The case should be moved to another county, she said, “if we want to be judicially economic and avoid additional delays and costs.”
Annie Jay, an assistant attorney general of Wisconsin who is prosecuting the case along with Clark County District Attorney Melissa Inlow, said the standard for considering a change of venue is not the mere presence or even the amount of pretrial publicity a case receives, but the nature of it. In this case, Jay said, the news coverage has been limited to the evidence presented so far in court documents and during court proceedings, and has not included opinionated commentary that may sway potential jurors’ viewpoints.
“The information that’s out there is not of the inflammatory sort,” Jay said.
A change of venue should not be granted, she added, just because some jurors may know about the case.
“We don’t pick juries based on people that have never heard about a story before,” Jay said. “That’s virtually impossible.”
In his ruling to deny the motion, Diehn said he is bound to move a trial if there is a “reasonable likelihood” that a fair jury cannot be seated. In this case, he said, most of the news coverage has come from reputable news sources, and it has not been inflammatory or opinionated.
“The huge majority of the content of those news articles are fairly straightforward ... recitation of facts,” Diehn said. “Just about everything that’s been in the news articles ... is something that I would expect a pool of jurors to hear probably in the first 10 minutes” of the jury selection process.
Contreras Perez is to be in court next for a Feb. 17 status conference, at which time trial dates may be discussed. The 41-year-old Mosinee man was charged in June with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse, both as party to a crime. Detectives investigating Ayon’s October 2020 disappearance spoke to multiple witnesses who said Contreras Perez had been stalking and threatening the 27-year-old Ayon in the weeks and months prior to her disappearance. The pair had a prior relationship and have a son together.
