PINEVILLE, Ky. — Erica Lawson appeared in court on Jan. 29 for a pretrial conference after the defense filed a motion to remove the death penalty. Lawson was present through teleconference from where she's being held in Bourbon County.
On Jan. 24, defense attorneys filed a motion for the judge to remove the chance of Lawson facing the death penalty. Previously, authorities say Elena was sexually assaulted. In the motion, the evidence showed no male DNA was found after a sexual assault collection kit was used.
"What's notable to me your Honor, is that the Commonwealth, once they received this motion, took the time to respond to the other motions that were pending, but did not respond to this motion, and in fact this motion, the initial motion for the bill of particulars was raised at arraignment five months ago," said Gregory Coulson, an attorney for Lawson.
The prosecution said Monday that the motion was misleading, and said several items in it needed to be clarified — including the sexual assault collection kit.
"It stated no male DNA on that. It then goes for further testing, in which there's been other lab reports and it's still being tested right now. That was one of the misleading things he stated, as to 'there's no male DNA,' testing is not complete on that and that's absolutely untrue," said Lisa Fugate, the Bell County Commonwealth's attorney.
She also said the prosecution intends to continue pursuing the death penalty against Lawson, and she said prosecutors anticipated the motion to be filed.
The next hearing in the case will be on March 20, to give time for the prosecution to respond to the motions and then to hear from the defense. The prosecution has until Feb. 17 to respond to the particulars and the defense will then have until March 8 to comment.