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YOUNGSTOWN -- The proposed retrial of Robert L. Moore, which has been stopped several times because of issues with a witness and a juror, got blocked again on Monday as the jury pool of 50 people ran out before any alternate jurors had been seated.
Moore, 53, is charged with murder in the 2009 disappearance and presumed murder of Glenna J. White, 16. White's body was never found. She was visiting a home on Alden Avenue in Smith Township when she left late June 2, 2009, with Moore. She had told others in the home that Moore had touched her inappropriately or tried to rape her, prosecutors said. Moore's girlfriend lived at the home.
The attorneys questioned potential jurors throughout the day and seated 12 people. They still needed four alternates. It looked like they might not be able to seat even one. By Monday afternoon, the pool had been exhausted for a variety of reasons, the attorneys said -- many because the trial was likely to extend into next week, Thanksgiving week.
Other reasons the potential jurors gave for needing to be excused included knowing the defendant's family. The trial is now reset to Jan. 8. There will be 75 potential jurors called to serve on that jury.
Moore was tried once before -- in June 2022. The jury found Moore not guilty of aggravated murder but could not decide whether Moore was guilty of murder, so prosecutors decided to try him again.
The case is being heard in Mahoning County because Alden Avenue is in Mahoning County, but White's home was actually in Stark County. Because of her poor home life, however, she was staying mostly at a friend's house near Alliance in the months before her death, a witness testified in the first trial.
The locations mentioned in the first trial were in or around Alliance, which is in or close to several county, township and city boundaries. The investigator who brought the case to Mahoning County prosecutors after getting a 2020 tip about the White case is Ed Kennedy of the Portage County Sheriff's Office. Portage and Columbiana counties also are close to the locations involved in the trial.
Sgt. George Starr, a sergeant with the Smith Township Police Department, indicated during the first trial that the Stark County Sheriff's Office was the first agency to investigate Glenna's disappearance, but when deputies determined Glenna had gone missing from a home in Smith Township, "they turned the investigation over to my department," Starr said. He started work on the case Aug. 8, 2010 -- more than a year after Glenna went missing June 2, 2009.
The jury in the first trial deliberated two days before they handed their verdicts to Judge Maureen Sweeney, who is presiding over the case again this time.
Among the issues that delayed the trial in recent months was the news that an important witness in the case, who testified in the first trial, had been charged with a serious crime in Stark County. Also, a potential juror made an outburst in the courtroom the last time. His remarks, which related to him not wanting to serve on the jury, created the possibility that he had tainted other potential jurors, officials said.