Jury picked for Dee Ann Haney manslaughter trial UPDATE 6 PM: A jury of six women and six men, plus 2 alternates will start hearing testimony in the manslaughter trial against former Texas City commissioner, Dee Ann Haney. It took nearly 8 hours of questioning by prosecutors and defense attorneys to narrow the jury to the 12 jurors and two alternates. Opening arguments are scheduled for 9:35 AM Tuesday (2/6/2024) in the courtroom that the 56th District Court uses. The visiting judge is still in charge, but it was moved into there because of its size and extra conference rooms it offers. Haney faces two manslaughter charges after a July 3, 2017, crash on a connector road to the northbound lanes of George and Cynthia Mitchell Galveston Causeway. Hong Phuc Le, 33, and his father, Van Duoc Le, 58, had pulled to the side of the road to secure their load and were outside a stopped black truck when Haney’s truck crashed into them and their truck. Both men were killed. Haney was initially charged with intoxicated manslaughter after telling investigators she had smoked marijuana several hours before the crash. Blood tests, however, never detected any significant amounts of THC in Haney’s system. Eventually, a grand jury indicted Haney on the two charges of manslaughter. The trial has been postponed, canceled, and rescheduled multiple times in the 6 1/2 years since the fatal crash. Delays in evidence testing, the COVID-19 pandemic, a fire at the Justice Administration Center, case backup across the county’s justice system because of COVID and the fire, and an emergency medical issue with a prosecutor last year that was supposed to delay the trial for only a day but instead forced a reset to February 2024. As the trial continues we’ll update you here.

Posted by i45NOW Joey at 2024-02-05 16:24:31 UTC