The Intoxication manslaughter trial is set to begin in Kendall County at 8 a.m. Monday. Credit: Flickr Creative Commons / Brian Turner

Despite a defense attorney’s plea for a change of venue, the intoxication manslaughter trial of Kendall Batchelor — the daughter of former San Antonio car dealer Ken Batchelor — will proceed in Kendall County, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Kendall County District Judge Kirsten Cohoon denied the motion, meaning the trial will begin at 8 a.m. Monday.

The rejected motion also suggests Kendall Batchelor’s high-profile DWI attorney Louis D. Martinez plans to dispute a Department of Public Safety crash report that alleged his client was intoxicated and high on controlled substances at the time of her June 2, 2022 crash that killed 49-year-old Boerne man David Belter.

Martinez filed the petition last week, arguing that the small jury pool in the Texas Hill Country had been tainted due to negative media coverage of the pending trial shared in a private Facebook group with 11,000 members.

The attorney also argued that potential jurors who read the media coverage wouldn’t give Batchelor a fair trial because stories cited a DPS crash report that said she had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of .166 and tested positive for amphetamines, opioids and THC.

According to Martinez’s petition, a separate DPS Crime Lab report shows Batchelor’s BAC was far lower and that other controlled substances in her blood were too low to measure. San Antonio criminal defense attorney John T. Hunter recently told the Current the tactic is frequently used by lawyers in similar DWI-related cases.

“Those breathalyzer machines have problems and are subject to user error,” Hunter said. “If it’s a blood draw, there can be errors in the way that the blood is collected, so a defense attorney would want to examine that.”

Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Related Stories

This article appears in May 3-16, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...