Trial of man charged with killing father to remain in Wayne County

A judge has denied a rural Wisner man’s request to move his murder trial out of Wayne County. In an order signed Thursday afternoon, District Judge Michael Long wrote that Carl Ruskamp, 34, did not meet his burden of showing that pre-trial publicity had made it impossible to secure a fair trial and impartial jury in Wayne County. Defense attorney Tim Noerrlinger had moved to change the trial venue on May 27, citing “extensive and highly prejudicial” coverage of Ruskamp’s court case. Long took the defense’s motion under advisement following a court hearing on June 10. “The court finds that the level of publicity regrinding this case has not been misleading or inflammatory,” Long wrote in his order. “The amount of news coverage is not pervasive.” Ruskamp is charged with first-degree murder, use of a firearm to commit a felony and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person in connection to the death of his father, 65-year-old Gerald Ruskamp, on Sept. 7, 2022. On that evening, Carl Ruskamp allegedly used a Ruger .22 rifle to shoot his father in the head at 320 Y Road just north of the Wayne-Cuming county line. After the shooting, Gerald Ruskamp was transported to Providence Medical Center in Wayne, where he was pronounced dead. Carl Ruskamp’s trial, which could last up to two weeks, is scheduled to begin on Monday, July 20. Earlier this year, attorneys in the case were provided with juror questionnaires, which had been sent to Wayne County residents in an effort to expedite jury selection and gain a sense for whether Carl Ruskamp could be tried fairly in Wayne County. The questionnaires, according to Noerrlinger, had indicated a section of the populace in Wayne County would be unable to be fair and impartial jurors. Thirty out of 101 prospective jurors said they had knowledge about Carl Ruskamp’s case, while an additional 16 expressed an inability to be fair and impartial. “In total, that leaves the court with … 46 out of 101 jurors that either have knowledge of the case — based on what they've disclosed in the jury questionnaires, the supplemental jury questionnaires — or have expressed an opinion that they are unable to set aside,” Noerrlinger said on June 10. A court must evaluate several factors when considering whether a defendant had met its burden of showing that pre-trial publicity had made it impossible to secure a fair and impartial jury. These include the nature of the publicity; the degree to which the publicity had circulated throughout the community; the degree to which the venue could be changed; the length of time between the dissemination of the publicity complained of and the date of the trial; the care exercised and ease encountered in the selection of the jury; the number of challenges exercised during jury selection; the severity of the offenses charged; and the size of the area from which the venire was drawn. Long wrote in his order that a court will not normally presume unconstitutional juror partiality because of media coverage unless the record shows a barrage of inflammatory publicity immediately prior to trial, accounting to a huge wave of public passion or resulting in a trial atmosphere utterly corrupted by press coverage. The Nebraska Supreme Court has found that even a community’s extensive knowledge of a crime or a defendant through pre-trial publicity in itself is insufficient to render a trial unconstitutionally unfair when the media coverage consists of merely factual accounts that do not reflect animus or hostility toward the defendant. “Again, the coverage has been factual and not inflammatory or invidious,” Long wrote. In the supplemental set of juror questionnaires, the judge added, a smaller fraction of the total number of jurors — well less than half — said they could not be fair or impartial. “Based on the evidence from the hearing, the court believes that the voir dire will be the best opportunity to seat an appropriate jury for the defendant,” Long wrote. Carl Ruskamp is housed at the Lincoln Regional Center on $1 million bail. If convicted, he would face life in prison plus up to an additional 100 years. In a separate case, he is charged in connection to a marijuana grow operation found at the family’s property on the night of the shooting. He faces up to 20 years in prison for manufacturing marijuana.