Lytle’s Request For Change Of Venue Denied

SPOKANE — During Tuesday’s pre-trial motions the court refused Jonathan Lytle’s request for a change of venue for his upcoming homicide-by-abuse trial.

The denial of the change of venue request means the case won’t be transferred out of Spokane County. Tuesday’s ruling follows another key ruling Monday where the court ruled Lytle is competent to stand trial for the death of his four-year-old daughter.

While his wife Adriana has confessed to her role in the death of her husband’s daughter Summer, Jonahtan Lytle has fought a delaying action through every step of the pre-trial hearings leading up to his trial coming up in October. He has even gone so far as to place the blame on the death of his daughter on the doctors who cared for her just before she died in March of 2007.

“It was [his] belief that his daughter had died not as a result of anything that he or Adriana had done but as a result of the police’s behavior or the behavior on the part of the physicians at the hospital where he had brought his daughter to be cared for,” clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Mays said on the witness stand Monday.

Pre-trial hearings in the Lytle case adjourned for the day after the court’s ruling on the change of venue.