Published: May 03, 2008 10:53 pm            

Drown trial location could be revealed Monday

GRAYSON — An announcement of where the triple-murder, rape and arson trial of Robert Lee Drown will be held is likely to come on Monday.

A status hearing in the case is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. in Carter Circuit Court. It’s anticipated that Judge Rebecca Phillips will announce during that proceeding where Drown’s trial, which is scheduled to begin Dec. 1, will be moved to.

Phillips ruled in February the criteria for a venue change had been met. However, she did not say at the time where the trial would be conducted. She did indicate, though, that Johnson County was a strong possibility.

Drown’s attorneys, public defenders Theodore Shouse and Brian Hewlett, asked Phillips to consider moving the trial to Fayette County, saying they did not believe potential jurors there would be as influenced by media coverage of the case as they would be in areas closer to Carter County. Phillips, however, seemed to be against their recommendation.

Phillips told the attorneys that moving the trial to Paintsville would not pose as great of a travel hardship to family members of the victims and the defendant as moving it to Lexington would. Also, Phillips said she had spoken with Johnson Circuit Judge John David Preston, who had told her a courtroom would be available for the trial in early December.

Phillips also said publicity was likely to be an issue no matter where the case was heard.

Drown is being held without bond in the slayings of Jennifer Ison, 31, and her daughter, Shannah, 10, and Marisa, 3. The victims’ bodies were found in the rubble of their burned-out mobile on Canoe Run the morning of May 9, 2007.

Authorities said Drown, a convicted sex offender from West Virginia, and Jennifer Ison met two nights before the slayings at a bar in Kenova. Investigators have said they linked Drown to the murders through cell phone records and DNA evidence.

If it is moved to Johnson County, the Drown case would not be the first high-profile criminal proceeding from Carter County to be tried there.

The trial of Gary Scott Pennington, who shot an East Carter High School teacher and custodian to death and held a roomful of students at gunpoint in January 1993, was in Paintsville in 1995. Pennington was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

A pretrial conference also is scheduled for Monday in an unrelated second-degree assault case against Drown. Drown is accused of punching a fellow Carter County Detention Center inmate, Donnie Elliott, in the face after the two got into an argument over what they were going to watch on television.

KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.

        

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