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1,450 Potential Jurors To Be Called In Boot Camp Death

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By MELISSA NELSON, The Associated Press

Published: August 31, 2007

PANAMA CITY, Fla. - More than a thousand Bay County residents will be called as potential jurors in the trial of seven former juvenile boot camp guards and a camp nurse charged in the death of a 14-year-old boy.

In a pretrial hearing, Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet said Martin Lee Anderson's death has received so much attention that it will be difficult to seat a jury.

The Sept. 24-27 jury selection will be at Panama City's civic center to accommodate the 1,450 Bay County residents who will be called as potential jurors. The trial, which is scheduled to begin Oct. 3, will be at the county's juvenile justice center because it has large courtrooms.

'I know this sounds strange,' Overstreet said. 'It's a trial that requires a different type of attention.'

The seven guards and the nurse face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of aggravated manslaughter of a child.

An exercise yard videotape from the camp shows the guards using their fists and knees to repeatedly take Anderson to the ground and then holding ammonia capsules under his nose. The camp nurse watched and did nothing during the 30-minute encounter with the seven men. The teen died hours later on Jan. 6, 2006.

Also Thursday, Overstreet barred attorneys from discussing the dead teen's alleged involvement in gangs or drugs, school discipline problems or threats of violence he might have made - unless the subjects were discussed in a guard briefing when he was admitted to the camp.

The judge also restricted evidence that Anderson's mother asked for her son to be placed in the boot camp.

And the judge ruled that a defense contention that Anderson's mother should have known her son had sickle cell trait was irrelevant to the case.

The medical examiner for Bay County ruled that Anderson's death was caused by natural complications of sickle cell trait, a genetic blood disorder. After an outcry from Anderson's family and the public, his body was exhumed and a second autopsy, by the Hillsborough County medical examiner, found that the guards suffocated him.

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