Willie Cory Godbolt, of Bogue Chitto, on Tuesday filed a new motion for rehearing with the Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Godbolt’s motion “urges [the] Court to grant rehearing, and … reverse his convictions, vacate his death sentences, and remand this matter for a new trial.”

In the motion, defense attorney Greg Spore argues that Godbolt did not receive a fair trial because his jury was not impartial.

The motion argues that those who wrote and supported the Supreme Court’s last majority decision denying a retrial refuse “to see that this is not a normal case; this is not a normal distribution of law enforcement-connected persons within a jury pool.”

Appealing to the dissent argument from the Court, and the case Mhoon v. State, Godbolt’s attorney argues that more than one-third of the jury pool in the trial represented the law enforcement community — “an extreme anomaly.”

This “assumes still greater concern given that two of the victims in this matter were law enforcement officers,” the appeal continues. “It is difficult to understate the ‘sympathy’ a law enforcement-connected juror would likely harbor for the murder of one police officer and the attempted murder of another.”

The result is a failure to avoid the appearance of partiality, Godbolt argues. “If we agree that courts must ‘guard against even the appearance of unfairness’ … and that the fair cross-section requirement is an essential guarantee of the right to an impartial jury, then a jury pool skewed toward law enforcement-connected jurors surely offends ‘public confidence in the fairness of jury trials.’”

“Godbolt’s right to an impartial jury was violated,” Spore wrote. “The only available remedy is a retrial.”

The appeal concludes that “Godbolt respectfully submits that the decision of this Court affirming his convictions and sentences, including his death sentences on the four convictions for capital murder, overlooks and misapprehends the record and controlling law. Godbolt therefore respectfully urges this Court to grant rehearing, and upon rehearing to reverse his convictions, vacate his death sentences, and remand this matter for a new trial.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, a date for reply was not yet scheduled on the Supreme Court’s docket calendar.