Retrial date set for Temple murder case
Prosecutors push for time; defense urges court for dismissal
David Temple, the Alief Hastings High School football coach whose conviction of his wife’s 1999 murder was overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct, could be retried as soon as November.
However, special prosecutors with the Texas Attorney General’s Office have not yet indicated whether they plan to try Temple again.
State District Judge Kelli Johnson, who had scheduled the trial for June 8, on Thursday granted a continuance in the notorious case. She also set it for trial, should it occur, on either Nov. 2 or Feb. 1, 2019.
“We’re disappointed that the trial court granted the state’s motion for continuance,” Temple’s attorney, Stanley Schneider, said after the brief hearing. “We want to go trial. David is innocent.”
Schneider has filed several motions to dismiss the case, including one arguing that Temple has not received a speedy trial.
The defense attorney also confirmed that prosecutors have not said whether they will retry him in the fatal shooting of his wife, Belinda Lucas Temple, a beloved Katy high school teacher who was seven months pregnant.
The judge has apparently decided to schedule the three-week trial months in advance because of a lack of courtroom space since Hurricane Harvey shuttered the 20-story Criminal Justice Center. If prosecutors decide later to drop the case, the trial date can be canceled.
Since Temple’s conviction was overturned 18 months ago, Schneider has simultaneously demanded a speedy trial and opposed any continuances while burying prosecutors in motions to have the case dismissed or have Temple declared innocent, a strategy that has left prosecutors protesting that they do not have time to prepare.
“Quite simply, the defense’s filing of these motions has made it even more unlikely that the State will be prepared for trial on June 8,” the Austin prosecutors wrote in their motion to postpone the June trial date.
In several motions, Schneider has said Temple will not agree to a delay requested by special prosecutors.
The Austin prosecutors were appointed after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office recused themselves, saying there were too many conflicts. Then-incoming district attorney Kim Ogg had hired several defense lawyers connected to the case, which has been in appellate courts for years.
Attorneys Lisa Tanner and Bill Turner with the AG’s office noted in court that they did not get the “massive” case file, which is contained in 33 banker’s boxes and contains thousands of pages of police reports, witness statements and trial testimony, until June 2017.
They have also filed response that they were already scheduled to go to trial in several cases across the state, including death penalty trials.
Temple was convicted of murder in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison in the 1999 murder of his wife.
At the time of the slaying, he was having an affair. Prosecutors had said that Temple staged a phony break-in at his home and made sure he was on surveillance camera at a grocery store in order to prove his alibi.
The defense has long asserted that the window of time he had would make it impossible to have committed the grisly slaying.
Temple was released in 2016 after a judge ruled that former prosecutor Kelly Siegler did not give the defense evidence they were entitled to before the 2007 trial.
Siegler, who left the office in 2008 after an unsuccessful bid for district attorney, has denied any wrongdoing.