Jury selection begins in trial of Everett bar owner

EVERETT — Nearly three years after his arrest, jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of Christian Sayre, the bar owner accused of drugging and assaulting numerous women in Everett over the course of nearly a decade.

This week, lawyers will need to whittle down a pool of 125 of Christian Sayre’s peers to a panel of a dozen with alternates in the process known as voir dire.

The defense has raised concerns that seating an impartial jury would be impossible due to the extensive pre-trial publicity. Sayre’s attorneys asked to move the case out of Snohomish County. But last year, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Millie Judge ruled the case would remain here.

Last month, the court summoned 4,300 potential jurors to respond to a questionnaire to gauge how they would perform.

This could be the first of four criminal trials Sayre, 38, faces in Superior Court. Judge ruled to separate the 18 charges into separate trials so as not to prejudice a jury against the defendant. The thinking is that evidence of some of the allegations could make the jury feel the others must be true, as well.

The other three trials are set for October, November and January.

This first trial, expected to last seven to 10 days, relates to a single victim. The allegations predate Sayre’s ownership of the Anchor.

In 2011, Sayre met a teenage girl at a Halloween store at the Everett Mall, according to charging papers. He was in the Navy at the time.

Within a couple weeks, he invited her to a Halloween party in Everett. Not long after that, they began hanging out regularly. He raped her multiple times, prosecutors allege. He also pushed her to send him nude photographs, according to the charges.

At this trial, he faces four counts of third-degree rape of a child and two counts of first-degree possession of depictions of a minor engaged in explicit conduct.

At one point, Sayre faced as many as 21 felony charges. Earlier this month, the judge dismissed three of those counts. In two cases, the alleged victims didn’t want to testify. Without their testimony, prosecutors couldn’t prove those allegations. On the third count, deputy prosecutor Kara Van Slyck dropped the charge “due to evidentiary considerations that the State is unable to resolve,” she wrote in court filings.

The judge dismissed the three counts without prejudice, meaning prosecutors could bring them back.

On Tuesday, the pool of potential jurors began with a questionnaire to begin narrowing them down. One of those summoned was a court administrator who has been working on preparing the case for trial. The defense and prosecution agreed to excuse him immediately.

Judge urged the group of potential jurors to not discuss the case in any way nor consume any news coverage of it.

Defense attorneys Laura Shaver and David Roberson represented Sayre in court Tuesday. He appeared in court in a blue button-up and slacks.

Jury selection was expected to last through the week.

Jake Goldstein-Street: 425-339-3439; jake.goldstein-street@heraldnet.com; X: @GoldsteinStreet.