Jury selection begins in 'burned boy' murder trial
Source: Associated Press
Jury selection begins in 'burned boy' murder trial
By Harvey Rice | February 2, 2015 | Updated: February 2, 2015 4:20pm
GALVESTON – Attorneys began paring a pool of nearly 200 potential jurors Monday to find 12 who will decide whether Don Collins is guilty of capital murder for setting a boy ablaze in 1998, causing burns that led to his death four years ago.
Mills, now 29, of New Caney was 13 when he allegedly poured gasoline on 8-year-old Robbie Middleton and set him on fire to silence a victim of a sexual attack two weeks earlier.
Middleton survived until age 20, but a medical examiner ruled his death to be a homicide because he succumbed to a cancer caused only by repeated skin grafts. Collins, a convicted sex offender, maintains he is innocent.
Although the attack took place on a wooded path near Splendora in Montgomery County, state District Judge Kathleen Hamilton moved the trial to Galveston County after ruling that the crime was so well-known in Collins' home county that a fair-minded jury could not be chosen there.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/woodlands/news/article/Jury-selection-begins-in-burned-boy-murder-trial-6057181.php
