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A jury was selected on Friday to hear the federal court charges against St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson and two top employees of his I Works online marketing company.
The trial is to begin on Monday against Johnson, Ryan Riddle and Scott Leavitt on 86 charges that revolve around allegations of bank fraud.
The 15-person jury includes three alternates who will take the place of jurors who aren't able to finish the trial, which is expected to last four to six weeks.
The jury was not officially sworn in on Friday after Leavitt's attorney, Marcus Mumford, filed a last-minute motion asking that the case be thrown out because of violations of the Speedy Trial Act.
The act requires that a trial be held within 70 days after a defendant first appears in court or that a judge grants postponement for causes spelled out in the law.
Mumford argued in a 46-page motion that the government engaged in "illegal and strategic delays" in providing evidence in the case, and that emails and other evidence remain either missing or inaccessible.
He also was critical of the actions of U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Warner, a former U.S. attorney and prosecutor, who presided over most of the pretrial affairs in the case.
In a March 2014 hearing, for example, Mumford said that when he objected to a request to waive Speedy Trial right, Warner "threatened to force him to trial" without the evidence. "You have to pick," the motion quotes Warner as saying. "You either get a trial date or you waive speedy trial."
Mumford's motion also argues that Warner's orders waiving the Speedy Trial Act rights were invalid because of "false and misleading factual findings."
He chides prosecutors for saying for several years that 49 exhibits in binders provided to the defense were its main evidence but that their exhibits for trial have grown to 900.
U.S. District Judge David Nuffer, who is presiding over the trial, called on the government to reply by 4 p.m. on Saturday and set a telephone conference call for Saturday evening to hear oral arguments.
Mumford recently got the case against accused Ponzi scheme operator Rick Koerber thrown out of court because of violations of the Speedy Trial Act by federal prosecutors. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision in a recent decision.