Rachel Morin Case: Change Of Venue Request May Surface During Friday's Hearing

BEL AIR, MD — A motions hearing in the Rachel Morin case will be held Friday at 9:30 a.m. before Judge Yolanda L. Curtin. The state and defense will hash out issues, including which evidence will be admitted for trial, a change of venue request, witness admissibility and constitutional rights.

The trial has been scheduled to start April 1.

Attorney Randolph Rice, who represents Morin's mother, said he anticipates the defense will argue for a change of venue, since in a motion filed Dec. 30, the attorneys for defendant Victor Martinez-Hernandez wrote the case has been the subject of “numerous inflammatory and prejudicial reports in both legacy and social media,” and his trial should be moved.

“Public reaction to these reports has been uniformly derogatory against the defendant, the numerous comments which accompany media reports indicate that the defendant has been the subject of nationwide public hatred and vilification, notwithstanding that no trial has yet occurred,” assistant public defenders Marcus Jenkins, Sawyer Hicks and Tara LeCompte wrote.

The body of Bel Air mom of five Morin, 37, was found along the Ma and Pa Trail in Bel Air in August 2023. She frequently jogged the trail near where she was found assaulted and beaten to death. Officials have said Martinez-Hernandez, 24, of El Salvador, entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant.

Martinez-Hernandez also has been linked by DNA to a home invasion and sexual assault in southern California of a 9-year-old girl and her mother.

Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said at a news conference following the suspect's arrest in Oklahoma that Martinez-Hernandez also is a suspect in the homicide of a young woman in El Salvador in July 2023, one month before Morin's death.

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