A man who has been jailed for five years awaiting trial in a Lawrence murder case will wait longer, after a judge agreed to more testing of evidence in the case. Rontarus Washington Jr., 23, is charged with first-degree murder and aggravated burglary in the Nov. 7, 2014, death of 19-year-old Justina Altamirano Mosso.
The trial has been delayed several times for various reasons, The Lawrence Journal-World reported. The first trial in September 2019 ended in a hung jury. A second trial was scheduled to begin this month. Washington was Mosso's neighbor at a Lawrence apartment complex. She was bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
On Monday, Chief Judge James McCabria approved a defense motion to order further testing on fingernail clippings and scrapings taken from Mosso. Currently available DNA evidence does not conclusively or exclusively point to Washington but the prosecution and the defense have both incorporated the forensic findings into their theories of the murder.
Washington has been in the custody in Douglas County on $750,000 bond since he was extradited from Greenville, Mississippi, on March 16, 2015.
