Anti-Muslim bomb plotters can't stack jury with Trump voters, judge rules

Three men accused of trying to blow up a mosque and an apartment complex housing Somali refugees in rural Kansas can’t try to stack their jury with Trump voters, a federal judge in Wichita ruled Wednesday.

Prosecutors say Gavin Wright, Patrick Stein, and Curtis Allen plotted truck bombings on the buildings in Garden City, Kansas, a day after the 2016 presidential election. The men are charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy against civil rights. Wright is also accused of lying to the FBI.

In early January, the men’s attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren to include prospective jurors from rural western Kansas because they were more likely to have voted for Trump and presumably have certain beliefs: In the eyes of Kari Schmidt, Wright’s lawyer, citizens from more-urban have different belief systems from rural-area residents, which could affect the verdict in this high-stakes case.

“I don’t think I can say it’s legally recognizable, but factually recognizable,” she said during the hearings earlier this month.

Melgren denied their request ahead of the March 19 trial in urban Wichita, calling it a “bare assertion” that geography would skew this trial unfairly. Kansas voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November 2016, with him beating Hillary Clinton by more than 20 percent, with nearly the same returns in Wichita.

In the past, courts have recognized that traits like gender and race mark “distinctive” groups that attorneys can highlight as underrepresented in a potential jury pool, but federal prosecutors argued viewing geography as “distinctive” would open a “dangerous door” that would let lawyers pre-cook their juries for perceived ideology. That said, once a potential jury pool is chosen, attorneys can strike potential jurors based on perceived ideology.

Melgren seemed to agree.

In his ruling, he noted that the men don’t have standing to pursue this sort of claim about rural voters, and even if they did, adding jurors from rural counties in western Kansas would only add 2.37 percent more registered Republicans to the jury pool, which already draws from some rural counties around Wichita.

This, Melgren wrote, was “entirely insufficient to show political discrimination.”

Political discrimination, prosecutors charge, is exactly what these men wanted to incite in the first place.

They allegedly formed a militia group called The Crusaders, and they hoped the attacks would “wake people up” and inspire further violence against Muslims, according to transcripts of wiretaps on Wright.