A defense attorney in a 2013 Aspen Hill homicide case announced plans to file a motion to continue proceedings past the try-by date in a pretrial hearing on Friday.
Defense attorney Justin Eisele, representing 28-year-old Vaughn Darvel Bellamy of Hagerstown, said he’d need a week to write up the request. A delay by the county public defender’s office in assigning the case to an attorney meant Eisele has only been involved for about a month.
“I didn’t see any conceivable way I could try the case on the first trial date,” Eisele said, referring to when he came on board.
Bellamy, 28-year-old Trevon Derick Davis of Hyattsville and 28-year-old Bryan Donte Byrd, of Washington, D.C., face murder charges in the death of 34-year-old Alexander Benson Buie.
Circuit Court Judge James Bonifant set a deadline of Aug. 16 for the motion for continuance and a deadline for all motions of Sept. 13.
“We have a trial date that was set when you took the case,” Bonifant said. “… If there’s going to be a request for continuance of trial date, I want it sooner rather than later.”
State law requires that a defendant be tried within 180 days of his/her initial appearance before the court, unless good cause is shown for delaying the proceedings. The trial is currently set for Oct. 7.
Proceedings have been delayed multiple times since the defendants were indicted in April. Friday was the fourth time attorneys had met for a pretrial hearing.
Voluminous discovery evidence and a few technical problems contributed to the setbacks, though Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office Deputy Chief Mary Herdman said those issues have been rectified.
Hard drives containing the discovery evidence given to two defense attorneys were missing information, then were misplaced when they were returned to the state’s attorney’s office. Herdman delivered updated drives to the attorneys on Friday, along with a table of contents to cross-reference for any other errors.
The drives were missing all interview recordings from 2018-19 pertaining to the case, but those have been restored, Herdman said.
Eisele also plans to file a motion regarding a gun in the case, which has been sent to a crime lab for processing but had not made it to prosecutors yet. Ballistics evidence from a separate homicide involving Bellamy matched the weapon in the Aspen Hill case, leading to the arrests.
Authorities have said Byrd and Bellamy planned to rob another man during the alleged incident. Police believe Buie’s resemblance to the target led to his death.
Byrd is out on $150,000 bond and appeared in the courtroom on Friday. Davis and Bellamy were being held without bond and weren’t taken to court for the hearing.
Charlie Wright can be reached at charlie.wright@moco360.media
