A murder trial originally scheduled to take place this week has been moved to the end of the month, according to electronic records.
Mark Anthony De Simone, a former Arizona lawmaker, was scheduled to go to trial this week for the May 2016 murder of 34-year-old Duilio Antonio “Tony” Rosales. The trial is now scheduled to start Jan. 29, according to online court records. De Simone, 55, will have a status hearing this Thursday and then a pretrial hearing Jan. 22 before the jury trial begins at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 29.
The trial has been postponed several times after initially being set for August 2016. DNA evidence was cited in one of the delays, and De Simone has also recently switched his defense to public defender Deborah Macaulay.
On the night of May 15, 2016, Alaska State Troopers found Rosales at a private cabin in Excursion Inlet, with two bullet holes in the back of his head. Rosales and De Simone were on a hunting trip along with a few others, and according to an affidavit filed in the case, De Simone admitted to multiple members of the hunting party that he was the one who shot Rosales.
Rosales had been working in Juneau for five years and worked at The Jewel Box downtown. De Simone served as a state legislator in Arizona after living in Juneau from 1981 to 1988. According to reports at the time, De Simone had moved back to Juneau shortly before the hunting trip in May 2016.
Trial for downtown transit center homicide defendant scheduled for February
A Juneau man accused of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide is scheduled to head to trial Feb. 5, according to online court records. David Valentine Evenson, 51, was arrested in early July 2017 in connection with the June 30 death of Juneau man Aaron G. Monette. During a fight at the downtown transit center on the night of June 30, Evenson allegedly punched and kicked Monette, 56, who later died in a Seattle hospital.
Surveillance videos reportedly showed Evenson punching and kicking Monette, and the Juneau Police Department conducted a manhunt with Evenson as its top suspect until Evenson turned himself in on July 7.
A Seattle pathologist found that Monette had a pre-existing aneurysm that burst due to trauma from the fight, and that the aneurysm was a contributing factor to Monette’s death.
Evenson is also facing assault charges in a separate case, and that trial is scheduled for Feb. 27.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
