Attorneys in the case of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters on Friday hammered out final details before her criminal trial set to kick off at the end of this month, including what role billboards or the local newspaper may have in jury selection.
Peters faces 10 criminal charges related to election tampering and official misconduct from events in 2021. Her trial had been set for February, but was delayed when Peters fired her attorneys at the last minute. On Friday in Grand Junction, Peters’ was in court with her latest legal team for a pre-trial readiness conference that included discussion of some past motions as well as concerns about how to address potential bias in the jury pool.
Robert Shapiro is the first assistant attorney general for special prosecutions at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and is among the team prosecuting Peters in the 21st Judicial District. He voiced concerns over billboards in town that may demonstrate “an uptick in potential indoctrination.”
At issue is a display on an electronic billboard situated near a prominent bridge that carries traffic into downtown Grand Junction. The advertisement in question includes phrases like “A juror can vote ‘Not Guilty’ if the law is bad” and “The jury is more powerful than the judge,” with some words spelled entirely in uppercase letters. The messages, which do not mention Peters directly, cycle in rotation with other advertisements, including ones for lottery games, kratom and a Mexican fast-food restaurant known for its signature fried potato side dish.
Dan Hartman, one of Peters’ defense attorneys, said this was the first he’d heard of the billboards and his team “did not participate nor condone” the actions. In fact, Hartman said, it was the defense, not the prosecution, that should be concerned about juror bias.
“It is curious to me that the word ‘indoctrination’ is being used now,” he said.
Another Peters defense attorney, John Case, said the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel had written more than “700 articles” about Peters “and they’re all negative. So we feel we’re starting with a biased jury pool.”
The conversation came up based on a request for the list of potential jurors who will be called for the July 31st trial. Peters’ attorneys argued they need time to review social media posts and other publicly available information, to “reveal their true bias, which we cannot do in the heat of court,” Hartman said.
21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett ruled some juror information could be turned over a few days before jurors come in to fill out questionnaires. He also downplayed concerns that the selection process would be unusually fraught.
“I’m not going to make a finding that the jury pool is already biased against Mrs. Peters or the People,” he said.
Friday’s hearing also included discussion over what outside matters could be allowed to be discussed in front of jurors, namely how much talk there would be about Dominion Voting Systems’ software and election results. Dominion was the subject of many unfounded accusations regarding voting machines and vote counting software.
The defense asked that information about Peters’ performance as clerk that isn’t related to the criminal charges not be introduced in front of the jury, like the failure to collect more than 500 ballots during a 2019 election. In most of these situations, Barrett had already ruled on the motions, largely narrowing the focus of the trial to the alleged misconduct related to election security.
But on Friday he expressed a bit of confusion around a case that has already dragged on for more than two years.
“I’ve lost track .. I don’t know which counsel that was or where we were at in the case,” Barrett said.
Peters’ trial is set to begin July 31.
CPR’s Stina Sieg contributed to this report.
