By Tommy Witherspoon

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Two women — a 54-year-old teacher and a 47-year-old health care executive — became the first two jurors selected Tuesday to hear the punishment retrial of convicted triple murderer Billie Wayne Coble.

McLennan County District Attorney John Segrest and his top assistant, Crawford Long, and defense attorneys Russ Hunt Jr. and Alex Calhoun examined six potential jurors Tuesday, the first day of individual questioning of prospective jurors in Coble’s capital murder retrial.

At least two potential jurors were excused Tuesday because their religious beliefs would not allow them to assess a death sentence.

Jury selection will continue until 12 jurors and two alternate jurors are selected. Judge Matt Johnson of Waco’s 54th State District Court tentatively has set testimony to begin Aug. 19.

Coble, 59, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1990 in the 1989 shooting deaths of Robert and Zelda Vicha, his estranged wife’s parents, and her brother, Waco police Sgt. Bobby Vicha. They were killed at their Axtell homes before Coble kidnapped his estranged wife, Karen, and later crashed their vehicle after a chase with police in Bosque County.

A federal appeals court upheld Coble’s conviction but overturned his punishment, saying special issues jurors answered that resulted in the death penalty were unconstitutional as applied to him.

Defense attorneys spent much of their time Tuesday asking potential jurors about mitigating factors and how they might apply those issues to the death-penalty question.

Coble, who spent almost 18 years on death row, faces death or life in prison. Jurors will be asked whether he committed murder deliberately and if he represents a continuing threat to society. They also will be asked if sufficient mitigating factors exist that would make a life prison term more appropriate that a death sentence.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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