Jurors in the first-degree murder trial of Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya had not been selected as of noon yesterday, but the trial is still scheduled to begin today, a spokeswoman for the district attorney said in the late afternoon.
The jury selection process began Tuesday and the trial cannot begin until the prosecution and defense can agree on 12 jurors. However, Janice Fitzsimons, a spokeswoman for the Delaware Attorney General's office, said that the prosecutors had not informed her of postponements, and added that she believes the trial will go on as scheduled.
Malinovskaya was initially tried in February for the first-degree murder of Temple graduate student Irina Zlotnikov.
The case ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury that was unable to break an 11-to-1 deadlock favoring Malinovskaya's acquittal.
The retrial is taking place at the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Del.
Malinovskaya was arrested in December 2004, after Zlotnikov was found beaten to death in the New Castle, Del., apartment of her boyfriend, Robert Bondar. Bondar had previously been in a relationship with Malinovskaya.
Though Malinovskaya maintained that she never entered Bondar's apartment, she did admit to having been in the area the day Zlotnikov was murdered.
Though retrials are common when a mistrial occurs, law experts say that they are less common when the original jury favors acquittal so heavily.
Malinovskaya has remained in custody at the Baylor Women's Correctional Institute in New Castle since her 2004 arrest.
