conviction of crimes in both state and federal court

For the third time in a more than six-year prosecution effort in the torture slayings of a young Knox County Couple, Davidson County will provide the pool from which potential jurors will be selected.

The clerk’s office in Nashville has summoned 480 people to appear Thursday in Davidson County Criminal Court to fill out questionnaires in the upcoming retrial of George Thomas, one of four defendants in the January 2007 deaths of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23.

The questionnaires are designed to help both prosecutors and defense attorneys to ferret out potential bias among the jury pool in a case that has been labeled one of Knoxville’s most horrific crimes and spurred extensive local media coverage and at least one national television documentary.

This is the third time Davidson County has been asked to serve up a jury pool in the case. Jurors in the original trials of co-defendant Letalvis Cobbins and his girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, hailed from Nashville.

Thursday’s jury selection process is one more twist in what has proved a torturous legal road.

Four defendants were originally charged in the kidnapping, carjacking, rape, beating and slaying of Christian and Newsom — Thomas, Cobbins, Coleman and Cobbins’ brother and alleged ringleader Lemaricus Davidson. Prosecutors Leland Price and TaKisha Fitzgerald demanded death as punishment for each.

All but Davidson demanded a jury from outside Knox County, convincing then-Judge Richard Baumgartner publicity surrounding the case had made it all but impossible to seat a fair jury in Knoxville.

A Davidson County jury in the fall of 2009 convicted Cobbins but spared his life. A Hamilton County jury also rejected death in Thomas’ 2009 trial. In 2010, a separate Davidson County jury acquitted Coleman of any role in the crimes against Newsom and deemed her a facilitator only in the crimes against Newsom. She racked up a 53-year prison term.

Davidson, on the other hand, made a tactical decision to opt for a Knox County jury pool in hopes of weeding out enough biased potential jurors to prompt a trial delay. It didn’t work, and a Knox County jury sentenced him to death.

Until January 2011 when Baumgartner abruptly left the bench without having affirmed the verdicts in the Christian/Newsom case as the so-called “13th juror,” a legal provision peculiar to Tennessee law. Baumgartner would later confess a pill addiction that has since led to his conviction of crimes in both state and federal court.

His confession led to the upending of the verdicts in the cases against Coleman and Thomas. In Coleman’s case, Baumgartner confessed he was high. In Thomas’ case, Senior Judge Walter Kurtz ruled the lack of forensic proof against Thomas made it impossible for him to step into Baumgartner’s shoes as 13th juror. Kurtz left intact the convictions against Davidson and Cobbins, both of whom left behind forensic proof of their involvement.

Coleman was retried by a jury from Jackson, Tenn., in November. That jury cut her a break on lesser charges and she is now facing a 35-year sentence.

Potential jurors for Thomas’ retrial will be vetted Thursday and Friday in Davidson County. Once a final jury is chosen, the panel will be bussed back to Knox County on Sunday and housed in a hotel throughout the trial, which begins Monday.