WOODVILLE — Defense attorneys for the only indicted suspect in Wilkinson County’s long-running voter fraud saga requested Monday that the indictment against their client be dropped due to its vague wording.

Circuit Court Judge Forrest “Al” Johnson denied their motion.

After approximately four hours of selecting jurors from a 500-person jury pool, defense attorneys Cheokwe Lumumba and his son Cheokwe Antar Lumumba and state attorneys District Attorney Ronnie L. Harper and Assistant District Attorney Walt Brown presented motions to Johnson, some of which had already been heard and taken under advisement.

Cheokwe Lumumba motioned that the court quash the indictment against defendant Connie Hollins, on the grounds that the indictment, as written, covers too broad an area.

“There’s a lack of specificity in the indictment,” Chokwe Lumumba said. “This is one of the most broad, vague affidavits I’ve ever seen.”

After debating the indictment’s specificity, Johnson denied the defense’s motion.

“The court is not going to quash the indictment,” Johnson said.

Following his father’s motions, Chokwe Antar Lumumba approached the bench with a motion to do away with the use of the ballots belonging to Latonia, Latisha and Ray Goodrich on the grounds that the court had previously ruled the ballots be excluded from the election due to the questionable validity of the votes.

Harper said the state wasn’t planning on using the ballots in question, but would be using the items that were affiliated with them and had secured the paperwork within them.

“We’re not interested in the ballots. What we have are the applications and the envelopes the ballots were in,” Harper said.

Harper said the box containing the ballots, applications and envelopes in question has been maintained and secured in Brookhaven, and only through a court order did he and Brown obtain the documents.

Another motion presented by Chokwe Lumumba argued that the grand jury from the last trial was improperly influenced because the hearing was moved to the police station instead of being within the courthouse’s courtroom.

But Harper said the municipal court, while located within the same building as the police department, was an acceptable location to have trials for the multiple cases heard that day.

Harper said the jury will receive instructions from the court and will not see how the original indictments were written.

Harper also said the proof presented will determine which instructions jurors are asked to carry out throughout the trial.

Johnson said he believed the trial will end Wednesday.

“I really don’t see the case, in any kind of scenario, going past that,” Johnson said.

The trial is set to begin at 9 a.m. today.