Kyle Waters, assistant district attorney, said Friday that the defense for Rebecca R. Pettit wants a continuance in the case. Waters also indicated that the prosecutor in the case, Doug Kirkley, will no longer be the prosecutor handling the case because he has been appointed to a special district judge position out of Wagoner County. The case will be re-assigned to a new prosecutor.
Currently a motions hearing is set for Feb. 25, while the trial is set to start March 10, according to court records.
Pettit is awaiting a new trial after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reversed her 2005 murder conviction and remanded her back to Sequoyah County for a new trial. Pettit will again face a charge of first-degree murder.
Pettit was first convicted in March 2005 of first-degree murder for the April 2000 death of her 6-year-old son, David "Adam" Andy Ray Pettit. Sequoyah County sheriff's deputies found Adam's decomposing body in Pettit's mobile home on the bed beside his mother, who had lacerations to her wrists and ankles. According to court records, it was determined that Adam died from asphyxiation.
Throughout Pettit's 2005 trial, the prosecution conjectured that Pettit gave Adam cough syrup to make him fall asleep and then smothered him before she tried to overdose on antidepressants. The prosecution speculated that Pettit awoke to realize she wasn't dead, but her son was. At that point, Pettit allegedly tried to cut her wrists and ankles in another suicide attempt.
Pettit was formally sentenced in April 2005 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Pettit appealed the conviction.
Pettit, who had once been declared indigent and was represented by court-appointed attorneys, lost her indigent status less than a year before the trial. Prosecutors argued that Pettit's marital and financial state had changed since her son's death. Pettit ended up representing herself at trial.
Pettit, in her appeal, challenged the trial court's ruling that she was not indigent and contended that there was no record evidence that her self-representation at trial was voluntary.
The appeals court found that the court record must show that Pettit understood the dangers of representing herself at trial.
"We have held that without such a record, we will not presume a defendant's appearance without counsel at a critical stage of the proceedings was voluntary," the appeals court wrote.
