PORT ANGELES — The first-degree murder trial of 17-year-old Lauryn Louise Last was continued Monday, this time to June 7.
The Port Angeles girl was 15 when she was charged as an adult on Jan. 2, 2009, with killing her newborn boy following his birth three days earlier on Dec. 30, 2008.
Previous trail dates were March 2, April 20, Sept. 24 and Nov. 16 in 2009, and Jan. 25 — Monday.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge Ken Williams granted the continuance after Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Troberg said he needed more time to receive reports from expert witnesses.
Troberg said they still must produce reports key to their testimony, Troberg said Monday.
“I will expedite that process,” he told Williams.
In addition, it’s difficult to block out the estimated five or six straight days on the court calendar that are needed to hold the trial, Troberg said in a later interview.
Port Angeles lawyer John Hayden of the Public Defender’s Office, representing Last, said her trial will “easily” take that long.
Hayden argued before Williams that the prosecutor’s office has yet to forward vital information about the case as part of the discovery process.
“The state is claiming intentional homicide,” Hayden said.
“It’s incumbent on them to tell us what they are relying on to prove that.”
Prosecutors allege that Last drowned the infant in the toilet and placed the body in an alley trash can.
Hayden’s wife, Suzanne, also part of the Public Defender’s Office and also representing Last, said in January 2009 that Last did not know she was in labor and that she went into shock after giving birth while sitting on a toilet.
An autopsy has been performed on the infant, who drowned.
“We need to know if the state is relying on that autopsy, and if they are, what allowed them to rely on that,” John Hayden told Williams.
Last pleaded not guilty in January 2009 after authorities found the newborn in a 30-ton trash container near Tacoma, where garbage had been shipped via the Port Angeles transfer station.
Last’s original bail was $500,000.
After about eight months in juvenile detention, she was released Friday on her own personal recognizance to live with her grandmother and an uncle without even the stricture of the electronic home monitoring bracelet.
But she remains under a nightly curfew.
Hayden did not know Monday where Last would attend school.
“She’s just catching her breath,” he said.
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Senior staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
