PORTLAND (AP) – Jury selection got under way Monday in the retrial of a Lewiston man accused of killing a Bates College senior in a street fight more than three years ago.

Brandon Thongsavanh is getting a new trial because the Supreme Judicial Court ruled last year that the jury that convicted him should not have heard about the “explosive” phrase emblazoned on a T-shirt he was wearing on the night Morgan McDuffee was stabbed to death.

Defense and prosecution lawyers were questioning members of a pool of about 150 jurors throughout the day in Cumberland County Superior Court, making it likely that opening statements and testimony would begin early today.

The trial was moved from Auburn after Thongsavanh’s new defense lawyer, David Van Dyke, cited the intense publicity the case had received in the Lewiston area.

In addition to scrapping any reference to the profane T-shirt, Justice Ellen Gorman ruled that the prosecution may not show jurors any photos in which the defendant has horns tattooed onto his shaved head. The defense said the tattoos, like the T-shirt, paint Thongsavanh in a negative light.

Thongsavanh had been sentenced to 58 years for what the prosecution maintained was an unprovoked attack on McDuffee, 22, who was trying to break up a brawl involving two of his lacrosse teammates near the Bates campus on March 3, 2002. The defendant has been held without bail while awaiting the retrial.

A key prosecution witness at the first trial was Chad Aube, a friend of Thongsavanh who testified that he saw him stab McDuffee. Since the end of the trial, however, the defense has found witnesses who say they heard Aube implicate himself in the stabbing. The new trial is expected to last about two weeks, the same time as the first trial.