Yager Trial To Stay In Kootenai County Judge Rules Coverage Of State Trooper’S Death In Gunfight Not Inflammatory

Scott Yager will be tried in Kootenai County on charges that he gunned down a state police officer, a judge has decided.

As part of a slew of decisions released this week, 1st District Judge James Judd also declared Yager fit for trial, meaning jury selection for the three-week trial will begin as scheduled on Jan. 25.

Bailiffs sent out nearly 200 subpoenas to potential jurors this week.

Defense attorneys asked Judd last month to move the trial, saying extensive media coverage of the shooting death of Idaho State Police Trooper Linda Huff would prevent the Rathrum man from getting a fair trial. To support his claim, chief public defender John Adams gave Judd a three-ring binder filled with more than 280 pages of media accounts of the 33-year-old trooper’s death.

Among those accounts were stories, editorials and letters to the editor since Huff died in a June 17 gunfight outside the ISP offices on Prairie Avenue.

“Although there has been some inappropriate commentary and opinion concerning Yager’s culpability and potential sentence, the coverage by and large has been both factual and noninflammatory,” Judd wrote in his decision.

Yager, 35, is charged with the premeditated first-degree murder of a police officer and committing a felony with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty should they win a conviction.

Careful questioning of potential jurors by attorneys on both sides ultimately will determine whether an impartial jury can be found, Judd wrote.

If an unbiased jury cannot be found in Kootenai County, Judd still could decide to move the trial or bring in jurors from other counties.

In other decisions released this week, Judd denied defense requests to throw out evidence police found during a search of Yager’s bedroom at his parents’ house, statements Yager made to police when he was arrested and evidence gleaned from tests of his blood.

Defense attorneys also will not be allowed to review Huff’s personnel records.

The judge has not ruled on another request by defense attorneys to keep prosecutors from introducing statements Yager may have made to deputies at the Kootenai County Jail. Yager is alleged to have made incriminating statements on three occasions during October and November.

Brian Coddington can be reached at (208) 765-7124 or at brianc@spokesman.com.