A two-week trial has been scheduled for October in the case against Rachel Leonard, the Cortez woman accused of killing her 5-year-old daughter, Annika Sandoval.
The closely watched Montezuma County homicide case has repeatedly filled courtrooms for months with supporters from Annika’s paternal side, as well as Leonard’s family.
The trial is set to begin Oct. 7 in the 22nd Judicial District. Prosecutors allege Leonard, 38, intentionally caused Annika’s death in March 2022, and a grand jury indicted her on a charge of first-degree murder last August.
During Monday’s hearing, Leonard entered a not guilty plea as the lawyers and Chief Judge Todd Plewe worked through trial setting dates. Defense lawyers had to fight to find a date that worked with their medical expert’s schedule.
The judge pushed back on allowing the expert’s schedule to dictate court dates: “Your expert is not running my courtroom. You got to be flexible. … You got to be more flexible than this,” Plewe told defense attorneys.
“Whatever we’ve got to do to make that happen. It’s been some time now that we’ve been working with this person,” stated Public Defender John Moran. “It’s critical to our defense to be able to call our doctor.”
Ultimately, the Oct. 7 to Oct. 21 trial dates were available for all parties, and Plewe scheduled a full-day motions hearing for Aug. 13.
Monday’s discussion on medical experts follows consistent themes of prior hearings, in which that type of testimony is expected to play a role at the trial.
At dispute is how Annika died and whether it involved intentional homicide, as prosecutors allege, or resulted from an undiagnosed medical condition or sudden, unexplained death, as Leonard’s defense team argues.
Earlier hearings centered on 3,000 pages of discovery from prosecutors, indicating years’ worth of investigation, and a mental health evaluation that ultimately delayed the defense from entering Leonard’s plea until now.
Meanwhile, throughout court proceedings, Moran and Deputy Public Defender Benjamin Currier continually urged the judge to reconsider lowering Leonard’s $2 million bond. Moran said the state’s evidence contains “real issues with the facts of the case.”
Plewe then reduced Leonard’s bond in January over newly disclosed genetic testing that emerged from the state’s discovery.
“The reality is, I am not here to decide today whether she is guilty or not guilty, whether she committed this crime or not,” Plewe stated before ruling on a lower bond Jan. 16, noting it was not a finding on guilt.
“As a judge, it’s hard to go back and determine what grand jurors would have decided with this genetic testing,” he said. “Based on my Google searches, this makes the case very interesting and very difficult.”
During the lengthy Jan. 16 bond hearing, Moran argued three genetic markers identified could point to seizure disorders or cardiac-related sudden death.
Moran called the findings “a nightmare for the prosecution’s case” and argued the grand jury may not have indicted Leonard had it known about the testing.
The prosecution’s account focuses on the events leading up to the child’s death associated with an informal parental custody arrangement, medical summaries, and digital evidence of Google searches made from Leonard’s phone.
According to an August grand jury indictment, Leonard’s phone showed Google searches in the days before the child’s death for “How long does it take to suffocate” and “Will 150 500 mg of Tylenol P.M. overdose?”
The medical report lists Annika’s manner and cause of death as “undetermined.” Pathologist Michael Arnall, assisted by Montezuma County Coroner George Deavers, found mild cerebral edema or swelling in the brain but no trauma, drowning, obstruction, food allergy or disease to explain her death.
Instead, the indictment details statements from the medical examiners, arguing that while there were generally no signs of suffocation, “if a person is unconscious or passed out, someone could put a pillow over their face and there would be no signs of suffocation, except for some cerebral edema.”
awatson@the-journal.com
