A judge rejected the defense’s request to move the trial of the four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of George Floyd to another venue Thursday.

Defense attorneys for Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, the four police officers charged in Floyd’s death, had requested a change in venue last month for the upcoming trial, citing public safety concerns and prejudicial publicity as reasons to change venue.

They had argued in their request that the massive amount of publicity surrounding the case had so “tainted the pool of potential jurors in Hennepin County” that a fair and impartial trial was impossible in the county and that concerns about harassment of the four defendants by the public justified a change in venue.

However, Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill denied the attorneys’ request, holding that a change of venue would likely not assuage the safety concerns and that the jury could be protected from outside publicity and thus remain impartial.

“[N]o corner of the State of Minnesota has been shielded from pretrial publicity regarding the death of George Floyd. Because of that pervasive media coverage, a change of venue is unlikely to cure the taint of potentially prejudicial pretrial publicity,” wrote Cahill. He stated, however, that he would reconsider his ruling on the issue if circumstances warrant it.

The defense attorneys had also requested that the four defendants be tried separately. This request was denied as well, with Cahill concluding that “[t]rying these cases jointly would ensure that the jury understands, with adversarial testing by all four Defendants, all of the evidence and the complete picture of Floyd’s death. And it would allow this community, the state, and the nation to absorb the verdicts for the four Defendants at once,” wrote Cahill.

Cahill also issued two other orders that same day; one allowing the trial to be televised and streamed live and the other requiring the jury to be partially sequestered during trial and their names kept confidential.

Trial is set to begin on March 8, 2021, and is expected to draw national, if not international attention, since the death of Floyd had sparked outrage and protests across the nation and had fueled similar protests in other countries across the world.