Sitting behind his curving, marble-faced court bench, Judge William B. Collins was eager to get a trial date set in the first-degree murder case of Kylr Yust.
Actually, he was more than eager; he was anxious.
“We need to get this set so we can take care of it,” he said, looking at the lawyers sitting at the prosecutor’s table and the defense table.
Assistant prosecutor Julie Tolle said, “We’re looking at October.”
…October, as in 10 months from now and nearly a year after Yust’s trial was originally scheduled to start.
At the mention of October, sighs went up from some of the 30 or more people who had come to the Cass County Justice Center this morning for a hearing in the case of Yust, who is charged with murdering Kara Kopetsky and Jessica Runions.
Collins wasn’t happy either…”We need to get this done,” he said.
Collins, who has been presiding judge in Cass County the last seven years, then began pushing back at the assertions of lawyers on both sides that they had other trials during the summer and couldn’t work the Yust case in until the fall.
He asked about June. No, that wouldn’t work, said one of Yust’s attorneys from the Missouri Public Defender’s Office.
“How about July, then?” Collins said.
Matt Vigil, one of Yust’s lawyers, said he had a trial in St. Louis starting July 13. But Collins kept pushing and finally got no objection to starting jury selection July 22. (Because of pre-trial publicity, a jury will be chosen in St. Charles County, and the jurors will then travel here to hear the case.)
**
It’s been a long wait for justice for the families and friends of Kopetsky and Runions.
Kara Kopetsky
Jessica Runions
Kopetsky was last seen May 2007 leaving Belton High School. Yust later told a friend he discarded her remains in a wooded area. Runions was last seen in September 2016 leaving a gathering with Yust. Witnesses at the gathering said Yust was drinking heavily and was “acting very possessive towards (Runions) and aggressive towards others at the party.”
The remains of both women were found in rural Cass County in April 2017. Six months later, Yust was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of abandonment of a corpse. He has been in the Cass County Jail ever since.
Yust
When Yust entered the courtroom this morning through a side door, he barely resembled how he has appeared in law enforcement mug shots. Instead of close-cropped hair, he had long, brown hair that covered his ears, the back of his neck and his forehead. The hair flipped up slightly in the front, and he had a full beard. All of his many tattoos were covered by drab, gray and white jail garb. Although he appeared calm and engaged, he never looked at anyone in the audience. I only saw him speak once to one of his attorneys.
His attorneys have filed several motions aimed at delaying the start of trial. One of those motions, that another mental-health exam be scheduled, fell by the wayside today. His attorneys said he is now receiving medication for psychological conditions that have been troubling him and that he no longer “lacks capacity to understand the proceedings against him or to assist in his own defense.”
In recent days, however, Yust’s attorneys have filed another seemingly spurious motion: They would like to have some of Kopetsky’s and Runions’ remains tested at a lab of their choosing, apparently to verify the Kansas City Police Department and FBI labs’ determination that the remains are, indeed, those of the deceased women.
Tolle, the assistant prosecutor, said this morning, however, that no part of the remains can be sent to a lab that is not accredited by a national accreditation organization. The lab the defense attorneys are proposing — Technical Associates Inc. in Ventura, CA — is not accredited.
“You didn’t know about the accreditation?” Judge Collins asked Yust’s attorneys.
“We just learned about it this morning,” Vigil said.
Collins scheduled a hearing on the remains-testing issue for Jan. 21.
He also eamarked July 7, 8 and 9 as days for other pre-trial motions to be taken up. “That should give everybody a chance to get all of these issues taken care of,” Collins said.
**
Well, we’ll see about that. Delay is the typical defense strategy in big cases, and Yust’s attorneys are in full-delay mode.
What was troubling today was that it appeared the prosecution was willing to indulge the defense strategy. The prosecution appears to have a strong case, and it may call scores of witnesses. But cases tend to weaken with time. Witnesses die (one already has in this case), move or otherwise slide away. And evidence sometimes gets stale, or even lost.
Judge William B. Collins
The people who sighed at the prosecutor’s suggestion of an October trial did so mainly because they are tired of waiting for justice to be served. But they also realized the hazard of 10 more months of delay. Their best hope for adjudication as soon as possible appears to rest with one person — Judge William B. Collins.
I again point to the events involving the kidnapping and murder of little Bobby Greenlease. From the time of the murder till both criminals were tried, convicted and executed was either 81 or 82 days. Our current system is a joke. This guy should have been executed long ago and the excuse that the trial is troubling to him is the ultimate insult to his victims.