Sampson County was considered but not chosen as the site for the first-degree murder trial of a former North Carolina-based Marine accused of killing a pregnant colleague.

And while District Attorney Dewey Hudson said he understood the reasoning for not moving the venue to Sampson’s county seat, he was disappointed that his hometown wasn’t selected.

Onslow County Superior Court Judge Charles Henry issued an order earlier this week changing the venue for the trial of Cesar Laurean from Jacksonville to Goldsboro in Wayne County.

The judge stressed that the trial should be moved because pretrial publicity surrounding the case might influence jurors.

Laurean’s attorney, Dick McNeil, had requested the change in venue and Hudson and his team did not object.

Tuesday, the district attorney said he had asked that Henry consider Sampson as a possible site for the trial.

“Sampson was always my number one choice, and then Wilmington,” Hudson said.

His reasoning, he said, was because the publicity was not as intense in Sampson as it was in the Jacksonville area. “I recommended Sampson because the media coverage was not nearly the issue it was in Onslow County and the surrounding area.

“I felt like we could get a jury here that had not already formed an opinion.”

Although Hudson said it was true that there was intense national coverage of the Laurean case, the local newspaper had no great interest in the case because it had no direct tie to Sampson or Duplin counties.

“Certainly Fox News, Nancy Grace, CNN, have been all over this, but on the local level, the intensity just wasn’t the same, not like the local stations that cover the Jacksonville area. You see, the Raleigh TV stations cover the Sampson area unlike Jacksonville, where there’s three stations, channel 9 out of Greenville, 7 out of Little Washington and 12 out of New Bern. They saturated the area with coverage all the time.”

And because of that, Hudson said, he believed Sampson would be an ideal location.

While there was coverage of the case from media outlets in Raleigh and Durham, it was not nearly like the persistent coverage from those closest to Onslow County.

“You have to remember the issue with trying to select a jury is not whether they’ve heard about the case, but whether they’ve formulated an opinion before they’ve heard the evidence. That’s what the test is,” the district attorney stressed.

And Hudson said he felt it would be less likely that folks in this area would have formulated an opinion.

“But I understand the judge’s reasoning. He just didn’t think it would be proper to move it to Sampson since that’s where I live, but I can’t help but wish it could have been here. I really believe it would have been a good thing for the area … it would put Clinton and Sampson County on the map, literally.”

Instead Henry selected Wayne County as the location for the trial, another area which gets its major TV coverage from Raleigh rather than down east.

“This will be a highly publicized case, without question. Everyone is interested in it, and the national media attention will be vast,” Hudson said.

The case is slated for trial June 28. “Things can happen, though,” Hudson said. “But as it stands, we’re set to go on that date.”