PORT ANGELES — A status hearing for a 17-year-old girl accused of killing her newborn baby was rescheduled last week.
Lauryn Last’s next hearing will be Aug. 13 in Clallam County Superior Court, it was decided Friday.
The hearing was delayed because her attorney had yet to receive the results of a mental health evaluation that was requested by Clallam County prosecutors to determine Last’s mental state at the time of the baby’s death and when she spoke with Port Angeles police officers about it.
Last was charged in January 2009 with first-degree murder — a charge later reduced to second-degree murder, the maximum sentence for which is 18 years and four months.
Her trial had been scheduled for June 7, but all court proceedings were halted last month until results of the mental health evaluation have been received.
Last is now living with a relative on her own recognizance.
The infant was full-term and died by drowning, according to an autopsy.
The infant’s body was placed in an alley trash can, later taken to the city’s waste transfer station and shipped to a waste station in Tacoma.
There investigators found the body in a 30-ton trash container.
Last’s mental evaluation was to determine if she was capable of understanding her rights to be silent and to an attorney when she was interrogated by police in January 2009.
The then-16-year-old — impregnated by a 37-year-old man in Colorado who is now imprisoned for sexual assault on a child — had waived her rights to have an attorney present during the police interrogation.
