Union Co. murder trial delayed

JONESBORO, Ill. -- A judge granted Union County State's Attorney Allen James additional time Tuesday to gather evidence in the murder case against Robert Pitts Jr.

James had asked Circuit Judge Mark Boie for the extension, providing evidence of a backlog of cases at the state crime lab that forced him to seek the delay.

Pitts, 23, is accused of killing his parents, Robert Pitts Sr., 45, and Marcia Pitts, 43, by shooting them in the head Dec. 21 at their Jonesboro home. He is in custody in the Tri-County Detention Center in Ullin, Ill., in lieu of a $1 million bond, in addition to a $250,000 bond for felony robbery and theft the prosecutor said is related to the homicide.

State law dictates a trial must begin within 120 days of arraignment, and time was running out for the prosecutor. Pitts originally was scheduled to go to trial Monday. Boie set a new trial date for May 29, with a pretrial hearing scheduled for April 23.

Union County Sheriff's Deputy Scott Harvel testified that 51 of the 100 exhibits collected at the crime scene were submitted for testing to the Illinois State Police crime lab in Carbondale, Ill.

Some DNA and fingerprint test results are not yet completed, he said, and the autopsy report for Marcia Pitts is not complete. No gunshot residue testing has been completed, either.

Stacy Speith, a forensic biologist at the Illinois State Police crime lab in Carbondale, testified that when the department received Pitts' evidence Jan. 2 it already was working on 27 cases. Twenty-three of those cases fell to her department, which does DNA testing, she said. Speith considered the amount a "backlog" of existing cases, putting Pitts' testing behind.

Speith added that gunshot residue testing was submitted to a Chicago-based lab March 2. She said she didn't know how long testing there would take. Gunshot residue testing has never been done in Carbondale, she said.

Speith said she was aware of the deadline and communicated the importance of meeting it to other departments at the facility.

"When a 120-day clock is ticking, we do our best to meet those deadlines," she said.

Defense attorney Patrick Duffy argued the delays could have been prevented. "Why did they sit on it two months?" Duffy asked of the delay in sending gunshot residue evidence to Chicago. "I certainly don't call that due diligence."

Boie said he believed the ISP crime lab did everything it could to get testing completed in time.

"The state has done a credible job to get the evidence," he said.

carel@semissourian.com

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