A Colorado judge on Thursday set a trial timeline for Letetia Stauch, who is accused of the brutal murder of her 11-year-old stepson in 2020.
Prosecutors say Gannon Stauch was stabbed, shot, and beaten inside the family’s El Paso County home, but the body was later found stuffed into a suitcase beneath a bridge in Pace, Florida, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Letetia Stauch’s trial was delayed, in part by requests for mental health evaluations, but Judge Gregory Werner seemed ready to get down to the business at hand on Thursday as he ordered all documents to be submitted for trial by February 13, including expert reports on Stauch’s sanity. Werner set a deadline of March 9 for all other motions and said jury selection would began on March 20 with the trial itself slated to begin on April 3.
District Attorney Michael Allen asked for six weeks of trial, according to KXRM.
“I think if it’s pretty extensive in its findings and what the basis for different conclusions might be, we might have to put on more evidence than we otherwise would have,” Allen said.
Werner said he plans to seat 12 jurors and six alternates and will allow only audio streaming.
Stauch’s defense attorneys said they were concerned about publicity’s effect on jury selection, but Warner said that “publicity itself is not a basis for removal of a juror.”
“The question is, it doesn’t matter what you’ve heard, doesn’t matter what you’ve seen,” the judge said. “The question is, can you put that aside and decide the case based on the facts? And if the answer to that is yes, then it doesn’t matter what they’ve seen, it doesn’t matter what they’ve heard.”
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[Feature Photo: Gannon Stauch/Handout; Inset: Letecia Stauch via KRDO-TV/The Gazette/AP, Pool]
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