Man charged with killing Eliza Fletcher to have trial in separate rape case in April 2024

Cleotha Abston-Henderson, the man charged with killing and abducting Eliza Fletcher in September 2022, will go to trial in April 2024 on a separate rape case.

Prosecutors say Alicia Franklin was raped by Abston-Henderson about a year before Fletcher was kidnapped. The two, according to court documents in a civil case Franklin filed against the City of Memphis and Memphis Police Department for failing to adequately investigate the rape, met through a dating app.

The rape case will be tried before the Fletcher case because Abston-Henderson's new defense attorney, Juni Ganguli, was able to thoroughly investigate the rape case quicker than the murder, Shelby County Deputy District Attorney Paul Hagerman said Thursday.

The official trial date is set for April 8, 2024.

A date was also set Thursday for a hearing on Ganguli's motion to bring in jurors from Nashville for the trial. Jurors are normally selected from the jurisdiction a crime took place within, but Ganguli said that the media attention given to Abston-Henderson and his cases would make a fair trial impossible with Shelby County jurors.

That hearing will happen on Nov. 16.

Judge Lee V. Coffee, who is presiding over all of Abston-Henderson's cases, said in court Thursday morning that in his 17 years being a judge in Shelby County, and an additional 15 years of being an attorney here, he has only seen one case have a venue change.

"We try some of the most highly-publicized cases in Shelby County in this court," Coffee said.

He added that he believes that bringing a jury from Nashville would hurt Abston-Henderson's case more than keeping the jury pool in Memphis.

More: Lawyer for Cleotha Abston-Henderson, charged in Eliza Fletcher case, wants Nashville jurors

"I've said this before, but will continue to say that Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee is the most diverse county in the entire state of Tennessee," he said. "It is the most diverse, is the most inclusive and I don't know that it would be in your best interest, frankly, to try this case outside of Shelby County."

Hagerman said that the Shelby County District Attorney's Office will file a written response to Ganguli's motion for a venue change, and said that he will oppose "any sort of venue change."

"We believe, like the judge, said — he mentioned the Lorenzen Wright trial in there, Memphis is incredibly diverse," Hagerman said. "Memphis has a wide variety of people and citizens. I haven't seen a trial, including the Lorenzen Wright trial, where we were not able to get a fair and impartial jury. (Memphians) are good jurors and this is their community. I think they have a right to hear these cases."

Ganguli, after the court appearance, said despite the national coverage Abston-Henderson's cases have received, he believes that a Shelby County jury would come in with a bias due to comments he said he has seen on social media.

"I think that when you look at the local social media accounts, when you look at the comments that people write for things like The Daily Memphian, the comments are, for lack of a better word, toxic," Ganguli said. "They are things like, 'Let's get this man straight to the electric chair;' 'Let's put him on a tall tree and a short rope.' I understand people are angry. That's not lost on me. But with that said, in order to ensure that this man gets a fair trial, that the system works, you have got to have a fair and impartial jury."

Though the motion to select a jury from Davidson County is only for the rape case, Hagerman said that Ganguli mentioned filing a similar one in the Fletcher case as it nears trial.

Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Cleotha Abston-Henderson rape case set for April 2024 trial