It was like a four-hour sales meeting: five media entities from San Angelo and Brady were called to the witness stand in the McCulloch County Courthouse on Thursday, asked to report on their audience saturation, geographical reach and news coverage of the case against 37-year-old Jason Allen Pepperdine.
Pepperdine stands accused of leaving the lifeless body of 22-year-old Grape Creek native Jaclyn Proctor on the side of the road on Dec. 31 following a car crash, then concealing her body in a bar ditch before fleeing the scene.
Word of the heinous allegations has circulated through various news outlets, defense attorney Stephanie Goodman asserted, potentially tainting the prospective juror pool of McCulloch County to the point that her client could not receive a fair and impartial panel.
To prove her point, Goodman called one individual from KSAN/KLST, the San Angelo Standard-Times, the Brady Standard-Herald, San Angelo LIVE! and a radio broadcast owner before judge Rob Hoffman on Thursday morning, briefly grilling each on their media audience statistics and advertising prospects in and around Brady.
Once the defense had made her case, 452nd Assistant District Attorney Steve Lupton called two Brady locals: a former, 18-year sheriff and a volunteer fireman. Both of the men said they’d heard little about the case and did not doubt the people of McCulloch could set aside the rumors and news reports to make an informed and fair decision based upon the evidence presented at trial.
In her closing arguments, Goodman rebuked the statements of the witnesses and pointed to pictures of the young mother with her child and her client’s mugshot.
“These are all inflammatory!” she said. “There is not way that the citizens of McCulloch County can put aside [what they’ve read in news reports].”
Having heard both sides of the arguments, Judge Hofmann denied the motion for change of venue at the conclusion of Thursday’s hearing. The trial will begin as scheduled in McCulloch County.
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There were two people involved in this accident. One died. The other, who was likely in shock, did what most living creatures do when something traumatic has happened and acted in self preservation. No doubt some of us are born warriors, who, when things really hit the fan, will wake up in shock, assess the situation, and start acting like natural leaders to preserve ourselves and those in our in-group.
Then there are those who, when our capacity for rational decision making has been compromised, make the selfish choice that most living things do and try to protect ourselves. Between shock and alcohol, I'm pretty sure Pepperdine wasn't all there. So, Pepperdine doesn't have the makeup of a war hero... Does that make him guilty of intoxicated manslaughter against his friend in the passenger seat, who happened to be female? Why did that person even choose to hang around Pepperdine, anyway? I would never get into a vehicle with a drunk person at the wheel.
Maybe we should just convict this guy of being a creep and be done with it; you know, just brand the word onto his mons pubis or something. We'll let him do community service driving a small yellow bus for the people in our San Angelo "justice system" who think it's a good idea to let sex offenders who abuse infants (not 18 or 19 year old kids who date a 17 or 16 year old or something actually kind of understandable that gets people put into the sex offender registry, but a GROWN ADULT RAPING A BABY) walk free. (https://youtu.be/6bWyhj7siEY?t=12s)
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