PANAMA CITY — Jurors selected to determine whether a man was negligent when his dogs escaped and mauled a 7-year-old neighbor to death should expect an emotionally charged trial, attorneys said in court Monday.
A handful of potential jurors said they did not think they could be fair and impartial if asked to decide the fate of Edward Daniels, 21, who is charged with manslaughter and tampering with evidence in the death of 7-year-old Tyler Jett. One juror cited her 7-year-old grandson as the reason she could not bear to see grisly photos of the boy’s wounds or autopsy.
“These are not photographs that anybody would want to look at,” Prosecutor Larry Basford said.
Kevin Carlisle, the public defender representing Daniels, asked potential jurors to set aside their emotional response when it came time to deliberate and base their verdict on the facts of the case and law.
“It’s probably going to be impossible not to have an emotional reaction to them,” Carlisle said of the photos jurors will see in the trial.
About half the pool of potential jurors in the jury box Monday afternoon owned dogs, and another handful had been bitten themselves or had a family member who had been bitten. One man previously had been on a jury in a civil trial involving a 7-year-old girl who was bitten by a dog.
Carlisle asked the dog owners among the group if their dog had ever gotten loose. One man talked about how his dog jumped over a 6-foot privacy fence. Another said his dog once broke off a leash and ran for 30 miles.
Basford, who said he expected the prosecution to call 18 or more witnesses during the two- or three-day trial, asked if anyone disagreed that dog owners should be responsible for their pets. No one did.
Daniels is accused of letting his dogs, Fat Boy and M.J., get free April 2. Tyler had just gotten off the school bus and was playing in his front yard when the dogs attacked him, tearing away flesh from his scalp and puncturing his carotid artery. He died of his injuries five days later at a Pensacola hospital.
Police and animal control officials said Daniels showed no concern for the boy, and he washed the blood from the dogs when they returned, for which he was charged with tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony.
Basford will have to prove Daniels knew the dogs were dangerous, and he intends to show the jury the dogs had gotten loose only a week before Jett was attacked. In that incident, the dogs cornered a neighbor’s grandfather, but were corralled before the neighbor shot the dogs.
If convicted of manslaughter, Daniels would face a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.