Phone glitch impacts potential murder trial jurors

Unable to call the courthouse, prospective jurors did their due diligence and showed up for potential jury duty on Tuesday.

What happened is hundreds of – with some estimates being close to 500 – people were outside the Johnson Boulevard facility in South Lake Tahoe. About 20 percent of those people were needed for questioning.

People were parked all over the place – at the cemetery, dog park and the north entrance of the complex at Marlette Circle.

Joseph Michael Nissensohn

The court didn’t know there was a problem May 21 until employees saw the line of people.

Jurors are needed for the Joseph Michael Nissensohn murder trial. He has been housed at the El Dorado County Jail in South Tahoe for several years.

He is accused of murdering Kathy Graves, 15. The remains of the South Lake Tahoe teen were found near the Mount Tallac trailhead in 1990, about one year after she was last seen alive. He was charged with that crime in January 2008.

Nissensohn, now 62, is also accused of killing Monterey County teenagers Tanya Jones and Tammy Lynn Jarschke in 1981. He was charged with those murders in fall 2008.

In 1990 he was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1989 stabbing death of a woman in Tillicum, Wash.

Jury selection is expected to take a bit. It started last week. The trial is likely to last until the fall.

If found guilty, Nissensohn faces the death penalty.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report