A poll of 1,000 Delawareans conducted by a defense attorney for Eric Bodenweiser was found in briefs arguing whether their client should be retried somewhere else.
The survey asked whether the respondents had heard about the former political candidate’s first child sex abuse trial or had an opinion about his guilt.
The Wilmington News Journal reports that in court documents the prosecutors summarized the poll as finding that 44 of 355 people polled in Sussex County had formed an opinion about the defendant’s guilt or innocence.
In addition, in Kent County nine out of 300 people had that formed an opinion.
Prosecutors argued that this demonstrated it would not be difficult for the former politician to get a fair trial.
Bodenweiser’s first trial where he faced 15 counts of sex crimes allegedly committed in the 1980’s ended in a mistrial in June.
The jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict.
In that trial the pastor of his church testified about an alleged confession Bodenweiser made to him and the alleged victim of the abuse who is now in his 30’s.
Bodenweiser had won the GOP primary for a state Senate seat in 2012 but abandoned his campaign after being indicted.
