Distance put between Lafayette woman's bribery charge and attempt to kill judge
Prosecutor: Case against Amanda Milsap won’t cover attempt on judge’s life. Change of venue considered. Plus, Purdue research giant Phil Low dies. Purdue engineering dean's hearing on NIST nomination
The trial of Amanda Milsap, a Lafayette woman accused of bribing a witness in an alleged effort to derail a trial of her former husband, will not include evidence about how that suspected plot extended to the shooting of a Tippecanoe County judge, a deputy prosecutor told a judge Friday.
Milsap’s attorney, Earl McCoy, argued during a pretrial hearing Friday that she had been lumped into media coverage about the Jan. 18 attempted murder of Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 Judge Steve Meyer and his wife, Kim Meyer.
McCoy argued that potential jurors from Tippecanoe County, given high-profile coverage locally, likely would have a difficult time by an April 8 trial date of making a distinction between what Milsap is accused of doing – “Limited to basically a phone call that either happened or didn’t happen,” he said – and charges against five others in what investigators say followed weeks later and led to the shooting of the Meyers at their Lafayette home.
A decision on a change of venue request, either moving the trial outside Tippecanoe County or bringing jurors from another county, will come in the next few weeks, Cass County Superior Court 2 Judge Lisa Swaim – appointed to oversee six cases tied in some way to the alleged plot – said Friday.
