Jury selection scheduled for Waco attorney’s murder-for-hire trial

WACO, Texas (KWTX) – Jury selection is set to begin Monday in Waco attorney Seth Sutton’s murder-for-hire trial.

Sutton, 48, is charged in Waco’s 19th State District Court with criminal solicitation of capital murder, a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison.

Visiting Judge Roy Sparkman has requested a larger-than-normal panel of 100 potential jurors from which assistant attorney generals Patrick Sloane and Matthew Shawhan and defense attorney Clint Broden will attempt to select 12 jurors and two alternate jurors.

Sparkman was appointed to preside over Sutton’s case after 19th State District Judge Thomas West recused himself. Likewise, Sloane and Shawhan were tabbed to prosecute Sutton after McLennan County District Attorney Josh Tetens recused his office from handling the case.

Court officials expect Sutton’s case to last five or six days, with testimony slated to begin Tuesday morning.

Sutton, who remains free on bond and continues to practice law, is charged with trying to hire a Waco police undercover officer to kill Waco attorney Marcus Beaudin, who is charged with sexually abusing one of Sutton’s family members.

Beaudin’s ex-wife, Chelsea Tijerina, was indicted along with Sutton in the alleged murder-for-hire plot before she was killed in a motorcycle accident in Hays County in May 2021.

The undercover officer infiltrated Sutton’s Red Mouse Cult motorcycle club, and Broden has alleged in pretrial motions that the officer took advantage of Sutton’s friendship and “pressed Seth to verbalize his fantasy of killing this sexual predator.”

The motions also allege the undercover officer ignored at least three orders from Waco PD commanders to shut down his investigation of Sutton and the motorcycle club, and went “rogue,” continuing the operation without authorization.

In a notice Sloane filed informing the defense of “potential impeachment material,” he outlined the officer’s apparent refusal to terminate the investigation. The notice said that the officer was made an official “patched” member of the motorcycle club on May 13, 2020, two days after the “third and final directive to suspend the operation.”

“This was done without permission and without the knowledge of his chain of command,” Sloane’s notice states. “On Thursday, May 14, (2020) believing (the officer) to be leaving the state, defendant Sutton met with (the officer) and first mentioned killing Marcus Beaudin.”

Sutton claims he was entrapped by the officer’s unrelenting insistence that Beaudin needed to be killed because of his alleged abuse of Sutton’s family member.

Arrest records allege Sutton gave the undercover officer $300 with which to buy an untraceable gun.

In a hearing last month, Sparkman rejected a request from Broden that Sutton be allowed to sit second chair and assist in his defense as an attorney.

Court filings indicate that Sloane and Shawhan could call up to 31 witnesses in their case against Sutton, including Sutton’s wife, his ex-wife, a Texas Ranger, multiple police officers from Waco and Woodway and two expert witnesses who might testify about the inner workings of “outlaw motorcycle gangs.”