RALEIGH -- Lawyers for Brad Cooper, a Cary man accused of killing his wife, hope to persuade a judge to move their client's murder trial out of Wake County, saying extensive media coverage had prejudiced the jury pool.
Also, prosecutors told a judge that they do not plan to seek the death penalty against Jason Young, another man awaiting trial in Wake County after being accused of killing his wife.
On Thursday, defense lawyers and prosecutors spent much of the day in a courtroom, updating Judge Donald Stephens, the senior Wake County senior resident Superior Court judge, on the status of all homicide cases pending.
Cooper is accused of murdering Nancy Cooper, the 34-year-old mother of two whose body was found near a storm drain outside an unfinished subdivision on July 14, 2008. Brad Cooper had reported her missing two days earlier. He told investigators his wife had gone jogging that morning and never returned home. A man walking his dog discovered her body about three miles from the home the couple had shared. An autopsy report concludes that she was strangled.
Michelle Young was 29 and several months pregnant when her sister found her body Nov. 3, 2006, in the master bedroom of the family's home in the Enchanted Oaks neighborhood. Cassidy, the Youngs' 2-year-old daughter, was on her father's side of the bed. She had not been physically harmed, according to investigators, but had tracked bloody footprints throughout the house.
Although Jason Young was a prime suspect early on, he was not arrested until December 2009.
After his wife's body was discovered, Jason Young told investigators he had been on a sales trip in Virginia the night she died. But in search warrants filed in the case, investigators said a side door at the hotel where Young, a pharmaceutical salesman, had stayed, had been propped open.
Though a security camera in a stairwell had been unplugged, Young could be seen walking through the lobby in video from a different camera.
Prosecutors have contended that the Youngs were having serious financial problems and that Jason Young was having an extramarital affair.
Although prosecutors do not plan to pursue capital punishment in the case, Stephens agreed to keep two defense lawyers on the case so it would be more likely to go to trial in May. Prosecutors recently turned over 12,000 pages of documents associated with the case and expect to turn over more.
Bail bond is reduced
In another homicide case, Stephens agreed to reduce the bond for Mariah Wisdom, a teenager who was charged this spring in the March 21 shooting death of Nigel Ellison, 18, a popular Knightdale High School student. Her brother Rajal Amed "Dynamite" Wisdom Jr., 22, and their father Rajal Amed Wisdom Sr., 45, also face murder charges in the case.
James Crouch, the defense attorney representing Mariah Wisdom, who was set to start college in Raleigh this fall, outlined some details of what investigators think happened the night Ellison was fatally shot.
On the day of the shooting, Mariah Wisdom was in the back seat of a car that her brother and father also were in, Crouch said. The Wisdoms' car pulled alongside a car driven by a man that the father believed had impregnated his daughter. Ellison was a passenger in the car when, according to Crouch, Rajal Wisdom Jr. handed his father a bag with a gun in it. The father, according to the defense lawyer's account, fired the gun.
Stephens lowered bail for Mariah Wisdom to $10,000. If she can post it and is released, Stephens ordered her not to leave Wake County.
