
A Tennessee man accused of raping a woman a year before he was charged with kidnapping and killing a schoolteacher will have his fate decided by a Memphis-area jury when he goes to trial in the sexual assault case, a judge has ruled.
Shelby County Judge Lee Coffee on Wednesday denied a change of venue motion filed by Juni Ganguli, the lawyer for Cleotha Abston, news outlets reported. Ganguli argued that Abston could not get a fair trial from Shelby County jurors because of intense media publicity surrounding the 2021 rape and the 2022 killing of Eliza Fletcher.