PORT ANGELES — Melissa Leigh Carter died in the area where her body was found, not brought to the cold, muddy thicket above the Waterfront Trail.
That was the testimony Tuesday of a Washington State Patrol crime scene investigator in the second day of a murder trial that has shed light on the dim world of Port Angeles’ teenage runaway scene.
But following the testimony of Karen Lindell Green, a state forensic investigator, attorneys for accused killer Robert Gene Covarrubias asked Clallam County Superior Court Judge George Wood to dismiss the first-degree murder charge.
That was because Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deborah Kelly had just handed over to public defenders Ralph Anderson and Harry Gasnick six pages of notes and diagrams taken by the pathologist who conducted Carter’s autopsy.
In the notes, Covarrubias’ lawyers asserted, were indications that the autopsy performed by Dr. Daniel Selove of Everett revealed that Carter, 15, possibly had oral sex hours before her death, had been dragged across an asphalt surface and had not died by strangulation along the Waterfront Trail.
“These issues, these revelations, are problematic on several levels,” Gasnick said, arguing that the late disclosure violated precedent that says prosecutors must turn over evidence to the defense.
“This is case mismanagement.”
