Charged with first degree murder in the beating death of his father, Michael D. Marchalk, wants his trial held outside the county.

Marchalk, who has admitted to beating to death Gary D. Marchalk on Father’s Day 2017, on Monday told Schuylkill County President Judge William E. Baldwin he wants the change of venue because of pretrial publicity and that his father was a well known defense attorney who practiced in the county, including in Baldwin’s courtroom.

Baldwin called the request premature. He said potential jurors would be questioned at jury selection to determine whether they have been swayed by news reports.

Baldwin also said that Marchalk’s father having practiced law in the county and before Baldwin was irrelevant.

He said he had no personal relationship with the victim, and so there would be no conflict.

Michael Marchalk, who is representing himself, also told Baldwin he doesn’t want “standby” counsel.

The standby counsel, public defender Kent D. Watkins, was appointed by Baldwin to assist Marchalk in his defense.

“That’s your decision,” Baldwin told Marchalk.

Marchalk was also concerned because he learned through discovery, the process by which both sides share the information they have before a trial, that prosecutors plan to use statements he had made to news reporters admitting he killed his father.

The statements in the discovery documents, he said, were incomplete.

“It was not the whole accounting of what I said,” Marchalk told the judge. “It’s just not fair.”

Baldwin told Marchalk he’d have an opportunity to rebut the statements at his trial.

The exchanges took place in Baldwin’s courtroom, where a hearing had been scheduled for Marchalk to present his requests.

But the prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Rebecca A. Elo, had not received notice of the hearing and so did not attend.

It is unclear whether there were additional requests.

Marchalk is charged with criminal homicide, murder of the first degree, murder of the second degree, murder of the third degree, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, robbery, theft, theft of a motor vehicle, access device fraud and recklessly endangering another person.

State troopers testified at an earlier hearing that Marchalk, 37, told police he used an aluminum baseball bat to bludgeon his father to death on Father’s Day.

Marchalk was staying with his father at the family home at 21 Pear St. on June 18, 2017, with plans to enroll in a drug rehab program the morning of June 19, 2017.

But after an argument in which his father refused to give him money for heroin so he “wouldn’t get sick at rehab,” according to court documents and testimony, Marchalk beat his 60-year-old father with the bat.

He then took his father’s wallet and fled in his car, traveling to Philadelphia, where he caught a bus to Atlantic City.

He was caught by police there on June 23.

Michael Marchalk’s brother Matthew discovered their father’s body the morning of June 19.