Demario Atwater, accused of killing UNC-Chapel Hill student-body president Eve Carson in March 2008, has asked for his federal capital trial to be moved out of North Carolina.
Atwater's defense team commissioned a poll showing that 57 percent of residents in the Middle District of North Carolina, where the case would be tried, already believe he is guilty and should be executed. Across the state, the poll said, 53 percent think he's guilty and 52 percent say he should be executed.
"There exists little doubt in the minds of far too many of the citizens of North Carolina that Mr. Atwater is guilty of murder," wrote Atwater's attorney Kimberly Stevens in a motion last Friday.
