With jury selection scheduled two weeks from today, Judge William Martin will hold a motions hearing today in the Charles Cook homicide case.
Cook is charged with murdering 76-year-old Myrtle McGill at her home along South 6th Street in Indiana in December of 1991. In December of last year, his attorney filed a motion asking Judge Martin to dismiss the charges based on the state’s law requiring a speedy trial. The law stipulates that the state must bring a criminal defendant to trial within 365 days of the charges being filed if the defendant is not in custody and within 180 days if the defendant is in custody. The district attorney is required to exercise due diligence, meaning everything possible within his power must be done to bring the case to trial, but the speedy trial “clock” can be delayed for a number of reasons, including continuances requested by the defense.
Attorney Aaron Ludwig is also asking to court to suppress statements made by Cook to authorities in Minnesota in March of 2016, and to suppress a DNA swab taken eight days later.
Cook was a drifter who came to Indiana after busing across the state to avoid detention in a halfway house. He was identified as the suspect in 2007 based on DNA on a cigarette butt found in McGill’s car, which investigators say he stole and abandoned in Pittsburgh after the shooting. He was finally located in Minnesota in October of 2016 and extradited to Indiana the following March.
After today’s motions hearing, Judge Martin has scheduled a pre-trial conference for this Friday.
