BY TERRY SMITH
Jury selection started Tuesday morning in Blaine County 5th District Court in the second-degree murder case against Keith Eric Blankenship, a 51-year-old Blaine County resident who is accused in the shooting death of an acquaintance in 2014.
More than 130 jurors have been summoned to potentially try the case. That number will be pared down to 14, with two of them to be designated as alternates that will not take part in deliberations once the case is given to the jury for a decision.
The trial is expected to last up to three weeks.
District Court Judge Jonathan P. Brody, who normally presides in Minidoka County, has been assigned presiding judge, following an earlier disqualification from the case of Blaine County District Court Judge Robert J. Elgee.
The state is represented by the Blaine County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, while Blankenship is represented by Hailey attorney Keith Roark, who was assigned as public defender.
Blankenship is accused of the multiple shooting death of Steven Michael Romanchuk, a 47-year-old Hailey man, on or about Jan. 15, 2014, at Blankenship’s home on Deer Creek Road north of Hailey. A Blaine County Sheriff’s Office report states that the two had a dispute over $100 that Blankenship owed to Romanchuk.
Blankenship was charged with second-degree murder after he turned himself in at the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office on May 15, 2014, admitting that he shot Romanchuk but claiming he did it in self-defense. The body of Romanchuk, who had been missing for several months, was found partially buried in a pile of leaves at Blankenship’s home on May 16, 2014.
Blankenship has remained incarcerated in the Blaine County jail on $500,000 bond since his arrest on May 15, 2014.
He is also charged with a second felony offense of concealing evidence.