This Friday marks one year since Laron Carlton Graham was indicted on two charges of murder, and the trial is still months away.
Graham, 41, was supposed to go to trial Feb. 19, but the trial date has been moved back to Aug. 19, according to court records. Graham faces two charges of first-degree murder for the Nov. 15, 2015 shooting deaths of 36-year-old Robert H. Meireis and 34-year-old Elizabeth Tonsmeire in Douglas.
There is a “voluminous” amount of discovery in the case, as defense attorney Natasha Norris wrote in her motion to push the trial back. Discovery includes phone calls, interviews, photographs and “thousands upon thousands of pages of documents,” Norris wrote, detailing that there are more than 21,330 pages of documents connected to the case.
During a court hearing in Juneau on Jan. 23, Graham said he’s unhappy with Norris and is strongly considering moving on from her, according to a transcript in court records. He’s getting impatient with the slow progress toward trial, he said in the hearing.
Graham represented himself in a 2016 trial during which he was found guilty of four felonies and nine misdemeanors, including vehicle theft, robbery and assault. He’s currently serving time for those convictions in Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, located there in part so he doesn’t talk to Lemon Creek Correctional Center inmates who are listed as witnesses in the case, according to court records.
