BATON ROUGE - A judge ruled Thursday to not throw out a jury pool in a murder case after court officials discovered huge portions of the Baton Rouge population have been mistakenly passed over for jury duty selection in the past eight years.

During a hearing Wednesday, East Baton Rouge Parish court administrators confirmed anyone who was under the age of 18 in 2011 or who has moved to the city since that year has been excluded from jury selection for nearly a decade.

Questions were first raised after the jury selection for the trial of an accused cop killer in Caddo Parish was moved to EBR. Thursday morning Judge Ramona Emanuel held a hearing concerning the lack of young people in the jury pool after the defendant's lawyers questioned the selection.

The judge denied the defense's motion to throw out the jury saying the young potential jurors weren't deliberately left out. 

JUST IN: Judge Ramona Emanuel (Caddo Parsih) has denied the defense’s effort to throw out the jury in murder trial of Grover Cannon because of 19th JDC’s outdated jury wheel @WBRZ

— Johnston vonSpringer (@johnstonvon) April 11, 2019

The defense said they would appeal the decision.

Defense says it will appeal this decision, but judge will not halt these proceedings while that happens.

Judge says 19th JDC did not intentionally or knowingly leave folks off jury list. Says law doesn’t support defense’s claim

— Johnston vonSpringer (@johnstonvon) April 11, 2019

Officials said it's still unclear why the pool was so limited during that time frame, adding that new population data had been collected for the court's system on multiple occasions since 2011. The Advocate cites one court administrator saying the error might be attributed to an outside firm contracted to manage the parish's "wheel" of potential jurors.