By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
Prosecutors will present their opening arguments in the second trial of Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle gunman Naveed Haq on March 9, 2009, after the jury in his first six-week-long trial could not reach a verdict on June 4 of this year.
Haq murdered Federation campaign director Pamela Waechter and seriously wounded five more women when he shot them all at close range in their workplace on July 28, 2006.
Haq appeared at King County Superior Court on Aug. 6 for another status hearing on his new trial, though without the goatee-style beard he grew during his first trial, but wearing the clothes purchased for him at that time.
Prosecuting Attorney Ehrin Ehlert told the court that Dr. Wheeler, the state’s best expert medical witness, cannot testify in February 2009 and is set to retire after that.
“February is going to be putting us up to that time period,” she said.
“We cannot risk losing Dr. Wheeler,” said King County Superior Court Judge Paris K. Kallas. ”I am very concerned about Dr. Wheeler’s availability. We also need to set more time aside for jury selection.”
In preparation for the first trial, the court took three days to question individual jurors but this time, they will need five — and possibly six — days for individual questioning, and two weeks for the jury selection process, Kallas said.
In addition to setting the date for the next trial, defense lawyers for Haq expressed concern over the volume of material they need to review before trial.
Prosecutors want to use 67 compact disc recordings of Haq’s personal jailhouse phone calls now in their possession as evidence against him in their upcoming case.
“It’s going to take about six to eight weeks to transcribe the phone calls,” defense counsel John Carpenter told the court. “I’ll know once we get all of the material transcribed.”
In addition to the nearly 600 phone calls amounting to between 4,000 and 5,000 pages of transcription that must be reviewed by the defense team, and the eight to 10 large binders of transcripts from the trial itself that they have yet to review, Carpenter said the defense may also have objections about the admissibility of those calls.
Agreeing to the need for another hearing date for sometime early in the fall of this year, Ehlert conceded.
“The defense may object to the incivility of the phone calls,” said Ehlert.
Judge Kallas set a date for the next status hearing on Oct. 16, 2008, when defense attorneys can disclose any concerns they may have with the admission of Haq’s jailhouse phone calls into evidence and as well as other pretrial motions.
Those pretrial motions are scheduled to be heard on March 4 and 5, 2009, with individual juror questioning and jury selection slated for the week of Feb. 16–23.
Lawyers in the case will be using a using a nine-page juror questionnaire similar to the one used in the first trial’s jury selection process to whittle down a potential jury from the initial jury pool. This phase will take place during the week of Jan. 30 to Feb. 6, 2009.