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Christine Trial: Jury selection complete
A panel of nine women and three men was chosen after defense attorney Edgar
Steele and prosecutor Rick Wesenberg questioned a pool of 38 people over the
course of two days on subjects that included their attitudes about fundamental
Christians, state child welfare agencies, and whether religious beliefs could
justify breaking the law.
The Christines, both 29, face charges of kidnapping, robbery, custodial
interference and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
The state maintains that on Aug. 1, Brian Christine threatened two child
welfare workers with a gun at an Interstate 5 rest stop as the workers were
driving the Christines' children - Bethany, then 6; Lydia, 4, and Miriam, 3 -
back to a foster home following a birthday visit with their parents in Grants
Pass.
According to police, Brian Christine took the state van with the girls in it
to a nearby lumber yard, where he met up with his wife and a friend. They then
switched cars, and escaped to Montana, where they were all found a few days
later, police said.
The defense maintains that the couple was rescuing their children from a
rogue state agency, the Department of Human Services, after having their
children unjustly taken from them a year earlier.
Steele has described the couple as fundamental Christians, and the couple
testified in a pretrial hearing that they occasionally fasted as a family for
breakfast and lunch as a religious practice.
Authorities took the three girls from the Christines on July 31, 2000 after
police, tipped by an anonymous caller, questioned them in their bus, parked
behind the library in Grants Pass. Police decided the girls were malnourished
and one of them, Lydia, had been hit by her father so that she fell down the
stairs, cutting her forehead.
The couple face another trial scheduled for July in Grants Pass on charges
alleging they mistreated the girls by withholding food, that Brian Christine had
assaulted Lydia, and htat Ruth Christine had withheld medical treatment from
Lydia.
Just before court convened for the day, Steele accidentally struck himself in
the eye with the end of an elastic cord while unpacking documents, causing a
short delay. Wesenberg told the potential jurors that he was mopping sweat from
his brow because he had a fever.
ROSEBURG,
ORE. (AP) - A jury was seated Friday in the trial of Ruth and Brian Christine,
who are charged with taking their three daughters at gunpoint from child welfare
workers.