Jury selection continues in retrial of man previously convicted of four murders

COLUMBUS COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — Jury selection continues for a third day in the retrial of a man convicted of killing four people in Columbus County more than a decade ago.

District Attorney Jon David says he hopes a jury can be seated by the end of the week in Danny Lamont Thomas’s case with the trial starting Monday.

A jury convicted Thomas in 2011 for three murders in Chadbourn and one in Whiteville back in 2005. Jurors could not reach a decision on a sentence for Thomas, who faced the death penalty, so a judge gave him four consecutive life sentences.

But in 2013 an appeals court overturned the convictions ruling Thomas’s attorney should have been allowed to replace a juror who admitted she knew a witness.

Regardless of the outcome of this retrial, Thomas will remain in prison for the rest of his life under a life sentence for a murder in Durham County.

Thomas’s 2011 trial was one of the longest and most expensive ever in Columbus County.