Jury Selection Begins For Trial Of Man Charged In 2018 Beating Death Of Norman Woman

Jury selection is underway for a Norman man charged with stomping a woman to death.

Joseph Alliniece is charged with killing Brittani Young in 2018 and if convicted could face the death penalty.

Monday’s jury selection for the murder trial of Alliniece was delayed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic; but prosecutors said the delay won't hurt their case.

The first small group of jurors was reduced from 15 to 8 in the first round of jury qualification. 

“We have over 100 jurors scheduled to come in,” Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said. “[We want to] get it narrowed down to 70 jurors to do the actual jury selection. The remainder of that 15 will then come back to be part of our 70 that we’re going to talk to.”

Investigators said in 2018, Alliniece beat Young to death in her Norman apartment. It’s because of the gruesome nature of the case, the death penalty is on the table.   

The Cleveland County district attorney said right now, both sides are focused on finding the best jurors to hear the case.

“We’re just making sure jurors can consider all three punishments, life with parole, life without parole, and the death penalty,” Mashburn said. “The law requires the jurors to meaningfully consider all three of those punishments so both sides will go through and ask questions to try and determine that.” 

The trial is starting a year late because of the virus, but the DA said time lapse is something they're used to. 

“Three years is still not uncommon in a death penalty case. We’ve tried death penalty cases four years after the murder so anything from a year and a half to three or four years is not uncommon,” Mashburn explained. 

Officials said this week will be for jury selection with the trial beginning next Monday. Alliniece is facing kidnapping and robbery charges on top of first-degree murder.