By Tommy Witherspoon

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Billie Wayne Coble capital murder retrial want to know what kind of bumper stickers prospective jurors have on their cars or trucks.

They want to know if they have any guns in their home, if they consider themselves leaders or followers, liberal or conservative, religious or not and what TV shows they watch.

Most importantly, they want to know their views on the death penalty.

About 120 prospective jurors appeared in Waco’s 54th State District Court on Friday morning to fill out a 12-page questionnaire that contained these questions and more.

Prosecutors John Segrest and Crawford Long, defense attorneys Russ Hunt Jr. and Alex Calhoun, and Judge Matt Johnson will use the questionnaires to help select a jury to hear Coble’s punishment retrial beginning Tuesday.

In capital murder trials in which the state seeks the death penalty, prospective jurors are questioned individually. That process will begin Tuesday, with three potential jurors set to be questioned in the morning and three in the afternoon.

Court officials expect testimony to begin Aug. 19.

Coble, 59, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1990 in the August 1989 shooting deaths of his estranged wife’s parents, Robert and Zelda Vicha, and her brother, Waco police Sgt. Bobby Vicha, at their Axtell homes.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed the penalty in Coble’s case but left his capital murder conviction intact. The court held that the two special issues Coble’s jury had to answer for the death penalty to be assessed — whether he committed murder deliberately and if he constitutes a continuing threat to society — were unconstitutional as applied to him.

The special issues posed to the jury came from instructions under the Texas death penalty statute at the time. The 5th Circuit’s ruling reflects changes made since then that limit the scope of the death penalty and allow a life sentence to be imposed if Texas juries believe there’s sufficient mitigating evidence to preclude the imposition of the death penalty.

At Coble’s upcoming retrial, jurors will consider whether sufficient mitigating factors exist that make a life prison term more appropriate than a death sentence.

Jury selection won’t take as long as in his first case because Coble no longer has the presumption of innocence and attorneys won’t have to grill jurors on the burden of proof standard. The voir dire process addresses punishment only.

Of the 117 jurors who showed up Friday, 32 were excused for a variety of reasons, leaving 85 potential jurors to begin jury selection.