NEW YORK — Suspected subway shooter Frank James says he can’t get a fair trial in New York City — so he’s trying to get his case moved to Chicago.
James’ lawyers are arguing that the nonstop media coverage of the crime and Mayor Eric Adams’ news conference where he repeatedly proclaimed “We got him” make it impossible for their client to find impartial jurors.
His federal defenders legal team has even conducted a phone poll — calling 400 eligible jurors in the Brooklyn federal court jurisdiction and another 400 in Chicago.
“Local media has repeatedly characterized Mr. James as a terrorist, a maniac, a raving madman and an unhinged nihilist obsessed with killing and hatred, none of which will be admissible,” his lawyers, Mia Eisner-Grynberg and Amanda David, wrote in court papers.
The filing was part of a flurry of motions filed before Judge William Kuntz on Monday, including an attempt to have the federal charges tossed, arguing that the federal terrorism law “limits its reach to acts committed on specified property used to support the operation of the subways, which does not include subway cars themselves.”
His lawyers are also asking for any witness IDs to be suppressed, as well as his statements to police, which they say were made despite his repeated requests for counsel.
James is accused of boarding a rush-hour train on April 12, setting off a smoke bomb and firing a gun several times as it approached the 36th Street station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Ten passengers were shot. All of them survived.
James is charged with committing a terrorist attack on a mass transit system and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and faces a trial starting Feb. 27, 2023.
“Mr. Frank James cannot receive a fair trial in the Eastern District of New York,” James’ lawyers argued in their filing. “Prospective jurors in the Eastern District of New York have significantly prejudged Mr. James’s guilt, admit that they will vote “guilty” if serving on his jury without having heard a single witness, and are decidedly more hostile toward him than prospective jurors in a demographically comparable district.”
His lawyers argued that the mayor’s “We got him” news conference was viewed online 4.7 million times.
And a day after the shooting, “emergency alarms rang on every New Yorker’s smartphone, alerting millions of people: ‘WANTED FOR BROOKLYN SUBWAY SHOOTING: FRANK JAMES, BLACK MALE, 62 YEARS OLD,’” the defense attorneys wrote.
“Here, New York government officials drafted the entire potential jury pool of the Eastern District of New York into service as citizen-investigators in their hunt for Frank James, and then assured them “we” got the right perpetrator: Mr. James,” his lawyers continued.
The 239-page change of venue filing includes dozens of news articles about the attack and nearly 100 pages of results from its telephone poll, conducted by the D.C.-based Select Litigation.
Roughly 69% of the people polled in the Eastern District of New York — which includes Brooklyn, Staten Island and Long Island — said they were aware of the Sunset Park shooting, and a majority, 57%, already believe Frank James is guilty, according to the poll results. By comparison, in Chicago, it was 38%.
The Northern District of Illinois, which includes Chicago, is demographically similar to New York’s Eastern District, the defense lawyers said.
When they asked the New York jury pool about what they remembered about the incident, the pollsters got replies like, “He was mad at the world,” “He killed the innocent people” and “he killed 30 people on the train last April.”
A few responded in racial terms, like, “He shot multiple unarmed non-Blacks on the subway,” and “I do recall a story of Frank James opening gunfire on a busy NYC subway station. But I just assumed he would get the typical NYC slap on the wrist and free to go if you’re a person of color.”
John Marzulli, a spokesman for Eastern District of New York U.S. Attorney Breon Peace, declined to comment Tuesday.
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