Coonrod retrial begins; jurors not told this is the second trial on charges of murder WATCH THE VIDEO

CIRCLEVILLE - Many of the facts are not in dispute. It's the conclusions that can be drawn from the facts that will decide the outcome, according to attorneys in the second trial on murder charges for Wesley Coonrod. 

"No one can dispute that what happened on March 7 of last year was a tragedy. It was about as big a tragedy as can happen to a family. On that evening, Wes lost two of his three sons, Stephen and Thomas," defense attorney William Mooney said in opening statements Monday.

A jury of seven woman and five men, along with three alternates, were seated Monday to hear Coonrod be retried in Pickaway County Common Pleas Court on two charges of murder and one charge of aggravated arson. 

Attorneys made no mention to the jurors that this is the second time Coonrod has been tried on the charges. 

Coonrod, 42, of Greenfield, was found guilty in October of two counts of felony endangering children. He had faced aggravated murder charges with death penalty specifications stemming from a March fire in his apartment on Lafayette Street in Greenfield, during which his sons Thomas, 4, and Stephen, 3, were killed. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the aggravated murder charges, two charges of murder with lesser charges of manslaughter and reckless homicide, and aggravated arson. The state will not seek to retry him on the aggravated murder charges, so he is no longer facing the death penalty. 

The second trial was moved to Pickaway County after the defense, represented by attorneys Mooney and Jerry McHenry, asked Highland County Common Pleas Court Judge Rocky Coss to consider the change of venue. Coss agreed with the defense motion, saying that the amount of media attention the case has received would make it difficult to seat a second jury in Highland County. 

Coss remains as presiding judge, and the state is being represented by the Highland County Prosecutor's Office.

In opening statements, Highland County Prosecutor Jim Grandey said that when the fire broke out, neighbors broke windows and kicked in a door of the apartment at 150 A Lafayette Street, "Trying to rescue these two babies that they knew were inside the house. And their efforts were to no avail. The father of the boys, the neighbors indicated, was outside, in his underwear, and while everyone else was trying to get inside the house to save his boys, he did nothing." 

Mooney told jurors, "That was a tragedy. And nothing that happens in this courtroom or anywhere else in the rest of the history of Wes Coonrod's life will mitigate that tragedy. Nothing we can say, nothing the government can say, nothing you can do will change that."

The defense alleges that there is a pattern that shoes Thomas an Stephen had a history of playing with fire, and that the fire that took their lives could have started if they were playing with a cigarette lighter.

While Mooney was describing the events that occurred on March 7, 2010, Coonrod could be heard sniffing, and on a few occasions wiped tears from his face.  

The state alleges that Coonrod set the fire with the use of an accelerant.

The Highland County Prosecutor's Office presented five witnesses on Monday - which puts the trial ahead of schedule, according to Coss, as they had initially planned to present three witnesses. 

The first witness presented by the state was Judy McCarty of the Greenfield Carpet Outlet. The carpet that was inside 150 Lafayette Street, Apt. A had been purchased from her store. She testified that the carpet had been installed in June 2009 and met the minimum standards for flammability as required by the federal housing administration. The carpet pad underneath the carpet was installed in 2007, she testified. McCarty also testified that she provided carpet samples of the same type of carpet and padding to the Fire Marshall's Office of the State of Ohio, which they used in their investigation.

Matthew Unger, the owner of the property, testified that there were smoke alarms inside the apartment in the kitchen, in a front bedroom and in a back bedroom. He said that he tested the smoke detectors some time in November 2009. He also said that he had never hard any complaints regarding the windows in the apartment, particularly regarding whether or not they stayed up once they were opened. However, Unger testified under cross-examination that he had no direct knowledge regarding whether the windows stayed up between July 2009 and March 2010. 

Coonrod had previously testified that he he was able to exit the apartment by opening the back bedroom window. The window was removed from the structure, according to the defense, which did not allow them to test the window to see if Coonrod's testimony could be supported. 

Previously, other witnesses testified that the back bedroom window was closed during the fire. 

Phillip Bobb, who lived in the apartment prior to Coonrod, testified that he had left lighter fluid in the apartment when he moved out in January 2010. Bobb said that he was watching a news story on the fire on television and, "I saw a deputy hold up the lighter can and I said, 'that's my lighter fluid.'"

Bobb also testified that he knew the smoke detectors worked because the one in the kitchen went off once when he burned a pizza. When asked if the other smoke detectors went off, Bobb said they did not. 

Bobb's girlfriend, Shanna Bennett, testified that they left the lighter fluid in the kitchen above the washer when Bobb moved out. 

On cross-examination, she said that a smoke detector in the bedroom was hanging from its wires when they moved in.

Firefighter James Thompson of the Paint Creek Joint Fire and EMS District testified about receiving the call for the fire. 

The call was received at approximately 12:29 a.m., and they arrived on scene at 12:34 a.m. 

Thompson said that in his 11 years as a firefighter, he had never responded to a fatal fire before. 

He testified about making entry into the structure, and eventually finding Thomas and Stephen in a closet in a front bedroom, and extracting them from the building.

Coss has said that he anticipates the retrial will go more quickly than the first trial, but he also told the jury on Monday that in his experience with the legal system, the only thing predictable about a trial is that they are unpredictable. 

The jurors, according to Coss, "are the most important people in the courtroom" and he would do his best to make sure the trial proceeded efficiently so their time was not wasted, without compromising the defendant's right to a fair trial.

The jury was seated after approximately three hours of the "voir dire" questioning process. Coss told the approximately 70 potential jurors that "voir dire" is a French phrase that means "to tell the truth," and encouraged everyone to be as truthful as possible when answering the questions. 

During the first trial, it took nearly three days to seat a jury out of a pool of 300 Highland County residents. 

Coss asked the potential jurors questions related to whether or not they knew or were related to Coonrod, or the witnesses who will testify during the trial. 

The witness list read by Coss was very similar to the witness list of the first trial, and many of the questions the defense and state attorneys asked the potential jurors were similar to the first "voir dire" process as well. 

Assistant Highland County Prosecutor David Henry asked whether or not people in the jury pool were familiar with television programs such as "CSI," and asked whether or not they would hold attorneys to the same standards of investigation as on television. 

Henry also asked if they would have trouble remaining impartial because the alleged victims in the case were children. 

He also questioned them regarding they had heard of the case or the initial fire through media. Only four potential jurors had previously heard of the case. 

Henry also questioned them on whether or not they were familiar with the Ryan Widmer murder trials, calling it the "newlywed murders." Widmer, who is presently being tried for the third time in Warren County on charges that he killed his wife. During his first trial, Widmer was convicted, but it was overturned after it was discovered that jurors experimented and speculated outside the courtroom over evidence and testimony.

Defense attorney Jerry McHenry questioned the potential jurors regarding the state's burden of proof, how they felt about circumstantial evidence, and how they felt about people who consume alcohol.