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Pima County jurors will decide the guilt or innocence of a Tucson man accused of killing two of his small children.

In a ruling made available Monday, Pima County Superior Court Judge Richard Fields denied a defense motion to move the trial of Christopher Payne, 30, outside Pima County.

Payne's attorneys had asked the judge to move the trial because of the extensive coverage the media has given not only the case itself, but to Child Protective Services.

Christopher Payne, 30, is accused of killing Ariana Payne, 4, and Tyler Payne, 5, sometime between March 9, 2006, and Sept. 1, 2006.

Ariana's remains were found Feb. 18, 2007, stuffed inside a plastic tub in a trash bin. Authorities believe that detectives overlooked Tyler's remains in the trash bin and that the remains are now in a local landfill. Several searches at the landfill were futile.

Ariana and Tyler's mother, Jamie Hallam, sued CPS, alleging that even though she had been given sole custody of the children, CPS and the police allowed Payne to keep them.

The lawsuit said CPS officials never investigated Payne or his girlfriend, Reina Gonzales, nor did they check on the children's well-being. If officials had, they would have discovered that Payne physically abused Gonzales and that he had been arrested on a drug-paraphernalia charge while the children lived with him.

Hallam settled her lawsuit against CPS for $1 million in June, but a portion of the lawsuit pertaining to the Tucson Police Department is ongoing.

The case of the Payne children, along with the death of 5-year-old Brandon Williams, resulted in a number of new laws designed to revamp CPS.

In his ruling, Fields said that because jury selection has not yet begun, it is too soon to tell if jurors have been unduly prejudiced against Payne by the media.

"While this court does not completely disregard the community's reaction to this case as suggested in blogs and the comments section in many of the online newspapers, this court will not decide the community's prejudice based on a handful of comments made by those individuals who choose to participate in this medium of discussion," Fields said.

Payne is scheduled to go to trial Feb. 17 on first-degree murder charges. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.

Gonzales pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in August and has agreed to testify against Payne in exchange for a 22-year prison sentence.