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The defense team for Steven M. Manson Jr. has filed 318 pages of exhibits in support of a request to move his trial out of Marion County. The packet was entered into the court record on June 29, about two weeks before the case is set for trial on July 13. It was filed under case number 45CR-25-118 in Marion County Circuit Court.
Arkansas law lets a criminal defendant ask to move a trial when local feeling is so strong that an impartial jury cannot be seated. That kind of request must be backed by sworn statements from qualified electors of the county. Manson’s attorney, Eugene Clifford, filed the exhibits to support that argument.
The filing is organized into three parts. Exhibit A holds signed affidavits from local electors. Exhibit B holds press releases from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, and Exhibit C holds news coverage of the case.
Inside the filing
The Observer reviewed the affidavits in Exhibit A. Each one uses the same printed form. The signer swears he is over 18, a qualified elector and a resident of Marion County, and that he is not related to Manson.
Each affidavit then states that the minds of Marion County residents are so prejudiced that Manson cannot receive a fair trial. The signer is asked to list the facts behind that belief in his own handwriting.
Among the affidavits are statements from two Marion County men, Cameron Rowray and Mike Lynch. Rowray wrote that the case has been “all over Facebook, all over Fox News and KTLO.” Lynch wrote that it has been on the news and on Facebook, and that the sheriff’s office posted about the case on Facebook.
Exhibit C is by far the largest part of the filing, and most of it is the work of this newspaper. Page after page reproduces Mountain Home Observer articles about the Manson family, printed straight from the Observer’s website. The reproduced material includes both news reports and opinion columns.
Readers deserve to know the plain fact of it. The newspaper whose coverage sits at the center of this filing is the same newspaper telling you about the filing. The Observer is reporting this story with that conflict in full view.
Exhibit C also includes a smaller number of items from other outlets. Those include web pages from the Little Rock television stations KARK and Fox 16, a Springfield, Missouri, article about separate animal-neglect charges against Manson, and a report from Ozark Radio News. The Observer’s articles still make up the clear majority of the pages.
That leaves a gap at the center of the filing. The signers point to social media, Fox News and KTLO. None of them name the Observer, yet its articles fill most of Exhibit C.
Clifford previewed the venue motion at a June 23 hearing, and the filing does not fully match that preview. He told the court he would support the motion with social media posts, and he estimated that 10 to 15 percent of Marion County residents were aware of the case.
The 318 pages he later filed include the affidavits, the sheriff’s releases and the news coverage. They contain no social media posts offered as exhibits, and nothing in them supports his estimate of how many residents knew about the case.
One of the affiants
At least one affiant has recently drawn news coverage of his own. KTLO reported in late March that Cameron Rowray was arrested in connection with the reported theft of a school bus. The Observer located the resulting case in Gassville District Court.
The case, No. CR-26-92, charged Rowray, 20, with misdemeanor theft of property. He was convicted and sentenced to six months of probation and a fine, which he is paying at $50 a month. It is a city court matter, which is why the case does not appear in the state’s circuit court records.
Rowray signed the first affidavit in Exhibit A on June 29. He swore that he is a qualified Marion County elector and that coverage on Facebook, Fox News and KTLO had made a fair trial impossible. He made that sworn claim about local media roughly three months after local media reported his own case.
Arkansas law does not treat these affidavits as ordinary letters of complaint. A change-of-venue request must be backed by sworn statements from qualified electors, meaning registered voters, of the county where the case sits. That standing is what gives an affidavit weight.
On that point, the records support Rowray. Marion County voter records list him as a registered voter at a Yellville address, which matches his sworn claim to be a county elector. His misdemeanor conviction does not affect that, because only a felony conviction can cost a person the right to vote in Arkansas.
The case headed to trial
The trial the defense wants to move accuses Manson Jr. of raping a girl younger than 14. Court records identify the child as his stepdaughter. He is charged alone in case number 45CR-25-118, and the offense is a Class Y felony, the most serious classification in Arkansas law.
Manson Jr., 35, is a registered Level II sex offender who was convicted in Illinois of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. The Observer has reported for months on how he bonded out of custody in Marion County as the charges against him grew. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Russo has asked the court to hold him without bond, and Prosecuting Attorney David Ethredge’s office is handling the case.
Russo has written that if Manson is convicted on the most serious charges as a prior violent habitual offender, the only available sentence is life in prison without parole.
Much of the coverage gathered in Exhibit C reaches beyond this single case. It includes stories about a separate Marion County case that charges Manson Jr. with two co-defendants, his father, Steven L. Manson, and his stepdaughter, who is identified in court filings as Dezarae Kennedy. It also includes reporting on conditions at the family’s property and on unrelated criminal cases in the region.
The venue request seeks to move the child rape trial. The publicity it points to sweeps in matters for which Manson is not on trial in this case.
A Marion County circuit judge must now decide whether to grant the venue request. The state may file a response before the court rules. Granting the motion would move the trial to another county, and denying it would keep the case in Marion County.
