Jury selection begins in N.Y. in slaying of Ohio woman

The daughter of Ohio State's band director was found with her throat slashed.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Jury selection, delayed three days because a defense lawyer disobeyed a judge's orders to come to court, began Thursday for a man charged in the slaying of a dancer from Ohio.
The first pool of almost 200 potential jurors was seated late in the morning after discussion about whether defendant Paul Cortez would continue to have Lauren Miranda, the previously absent lawyer, represent him.
Miranda was fined 1,000 on Tuesday after state Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman found her in criminal contempt of court for disobeying her order to show up for jury selection.
Accused of slashing
Cortez, a 25-year-old yoga instructor and rock musician, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in Catherine Woods' death.
Cortez, Woods' former boyfriend, is accused of slashing her throat and leaving her dead in her Manhattan apartment.
Woods, 21, was found dead Nov. 27, 2005, by another former boyfriend, David Haughn, an Ohio man she lived with on the Upper East Side.
Police first considered Haughn a potential suspect but later focused on Cortez.
Reports by witnesses who had seen Woods and Cortez together before her death and a bloody fingerprint found in Woods' apartment led to Cortez's arrest.
Woods, the daughter of Ohio State University band director Jon Woods, arrived in New York in 2002 hoping to dance on Broadway. Unable to find work on the Great White Way, she had been dancing in a topless bar to pay her bills around the time she was killed.