Intense news media coverage and recent public demonstrations on behalf of a woman at the center of a sexual assault case prompted Lancaster County District Court Judge Jeffre Cheuvront to declare a mistrial.

Cheuvront, speaking from the bench, told prosecutors, defense attorneys and what remained of the jury pool Monday that he doubted an impartial jury could be seated in view of the intense, often emotional, interest in the case.

“It would be asking too much to ask a jury not to be influenced by some of this activity,” Cheuvront said. “We will see if we can get the case tried again sometime in the future.”

The case is pending, and Cheuvront said he was continuing the trial to an undetermined date, perhaps in another county.

Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey could not be reached for comment Thursday about how his office will proceed.

When and if the case is tried again, the defendant, Pamir Safi, could seek a change of venue, or Cheuvront could order one.

The mistrial, declared on Cheuvront’s motion, was the second for Safi. The 33-year-old Lincoln man is accused of sexually assaulting Tory Bowen, who was a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student at the time, at his apartment Oct. 31, 2004.

Safi has said the sex was consensual. Prosecutors allege he knew that Bowen, then 21, was too intoxicated to give consent.

Last year, jurors at the first trial deadlocked 7-5 after hearing about one week of testimony. Cheuvront declared a mistrial Nov. 6.

Bowen said in an interview Thursday that she hopes the county attorney’s office will prosecute the case again.

“It’s disheartening, because when you want justice, you want it now,” she said. “But if it takes 10 years, I’m prepared. I don’t care how long it takes to get a fair trial.”

Clarence Mock, one of Safi’s attorneys, said the mistrial was the culmination of a concerted effort by Bowen and her supporters to influence the jury pool.

“This is one of the most reprehensible attacks on the judicial system that I’ve seen,” he said in an interview outside Cheuvront’s courtroom.

“This (the mistrial) is totally the result of Ms. Bowen and her outside agitators’ (attempt) to influence the jury.”

The case has indeed drawn interest and involvement from across the country.

On Monday, the first day of jury selection, members of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, – a Chicago-based advocacy organization – and several area residents stood outside the County-City Building with placards bearing certain words and phrases that Cheuvront in pre-trial orders had banned from the trial. The banned language included “rape,” “victim,” “assailant,” “sexual assault kit” and “sexual assault nurse.”

A similar rally was held Wednesday at the Capitol Building.

In addition, Wendy Murphy, a nationally known professor at the New England School of Law, challenged the language ban in the Nebraska Supreme Court and in Cheuvront’s court.

The Supreme Court refused to take the appeal, and Cheuvront denied the claim. The legal maneuvering over the language issue, like the public demonstrations, was closely followed by news media.

In his order declaring the mistrial, Cheuvront said the Monday rally Monday was promoted on a Web site — linked to PAVE — that included a petition signed by, among others, Bowen and Taylor Hahn, one of her sorority sisters who was scheduled to testify at the trial.

Cheuvront noted the rally began at noon, when jurors are ordinarily excused for lunch.

“The inescapable conclusion from the petition promoting the rally,” he wrote, “is that Ms. Bowen and her friends hoped to intimidate this court and interfere with the selection of a fair and impartial jury.”

Seventy-five prospective jurors were summoned to the courthouse this week. By the end of the day Wednesday, Cheuvront wrote, all but 31 or 32 had been excused.

Most of the dismissed prospective jurors indicated they had been exposed to news reports that either caused them to reach a conclusion about the case or exposed them to evidence that would be inadmissible at the trial, the judge wrote.

PAVE founder Angela Rose said the organization did not intend to influence the jury pool. She strongly disputed Mock’s characterization of “outside agitators” causing the mistrial.

“It’s not just me coming to Nebraska,” she said. “People in Nebraska were outraged” by Cheuvront’s language orders.

Bowen agreed.

“There would have been no demonstrations if this order had not been in place,” she said.

She said a similar order in place at the first trial affected the tenor of her testimony.

“It’s very intimidating being on the witness stand and having this looming fear that if I use the wrong words, I’m going to jail or the case would be thrown out,” she said.

Bowen has said that by describing the encounter with Safi as “sex” rather than “rape,” jurors might infer that she consented to have intercourse with him.

Two jurors who favored acquittal – Cheryl Larson and Chuck Morrison – said in interviews this week that the language ban was irrelevant to the first trial’s outcome. But Bowen thinks they might have voted differently if she could have used the words on the witness stand most natural to her to describe the encounter with Safi.

“I don’t know how they could know it wouldn’t have made a difference,” she said.

Reach Clarence Mabin at cmabin@journalstar.com or 473-7234.