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Blaming everyone from the deputies who pull security detail in the courtrooms to the media to Gov. Bill Richardson was not enough for Michael Paul Astorga's attorney to convince a judge today to move the trial out of Albuquerque.

State District Judge Neil Candelaria denied attorney Gary Mitchell's request for a change of venue, saying he was not convinced that the intensive attention to Astorga, who is accused of killing a Bernalillo County sheriff's deputy, precluded selecting a fair and impartial jury in Albuquerque.

Mitchell, a Ruidoso lawyer who is no stranger to high-profile cases, had argued that other notorious cases had been granted a venue change.

He cited the Hollywood Video murders, the Linda Lee Daniels slaying and Gordon House's drunken driving crash that killed a mother and her daughters on Christmas Eve, saying the Astorga case has garnered "as much or more" publicity as any of those cases.

Mitchell offered into evidence copies of more than 100 headlines on the Astorga case published in the Albuquerque Journal, more than 75 headlines on the case published in The Albuquerque Tribune and 210 Google hits on Astorga as proof of the barrage of media attention his client has received.

"The publicity has been relentless," he said.

Mitchell also said that while most of the publicity and public sentiment has been sympathetic to Bernalillo County sheriff's Deputy James McGrane Jr., whom Astorga is accused of shooting during a March 2006 traffic stop in Tijeras, it had not been so for Astorga.

"There's almost a vehement dislike and comment" for Astorga and his family, Mitchell said.

But prosecutor Troy Davis said Mitchell had not proven that the news accounts of the case had been "inflammatory or biased" as the law demands, and he suggested that much of the publicity had been generated by Mitchell's frequent comments to reporters.

Davis also rebutted Mitchell's arguments that jurors would be further biased because of comments Mitchell said Gov. Bill Richardson made about the appropriateness of the death penalty for Astorga, by Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White's run for the 1st Congressional District or by uniformed deputies on security detail in the courtroom.

"All we have in evidence is what Gary Mitchell speculates about," Davis said.

Today's hearing was to have been the start of a three-day continuation of Mitchell's arguments against allowing the case to go forward as a death penalty case.

Mitchell's argument is based on data he said proves that death penalty-qualified juries are biased in favor of the death penalty.

Those arguments will now be heard on the March dates set aside for trial, thus pushing back the trial by as much as a year or more should either side appeal the judge's death-penalty ruling.

Both sides have acknowledged the need for care and time in deciding what District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said could be the model for future death penalty cases in New Mexico.

"What is critical is we're forging a new path that really hasn't been challenged by a prosecutor," said Brandenburg, who is prosecuting the Astorga case with Davis and Chief Deputy District Attorney Todd Heisey.