The murder trial of Rachel Leonard, a Cortez mother accused in the 2022 death of her 5-year-old daughter, has been postponed until next year.
The attorneys are continuing to litigate pre-trial motions, such as one attempting to suppress a police search warrant for Leonard’s cellphone. In court Friday, the parties agreed those couple of motions and responses to them couldn’t be adequately addressed within the time frame for an October trial.
Appearing virtually by Webex, Leonard agreed to waive speedy trial in court Friday.
Meaning under Colorado Revised Statutes section 18-1-405, legal counsels have an additional six months before the case must be brought to a jury under a person’s constitutional right to a prompt and fair trial.
Leonard, 39, stands indicted for first-degree murder of her young daughter, Annika Sandoval-Leonard, a charge she plead not guilty to.
The child’s cause and manner of death could not be medically determined by a forensic pathologist after Annika was declared dead March 29, 2022, after she went to sleep the prior night in the bed she shared with her mother at the extended family’s home on a county road outside Cortez.
Twenty-second District Court Judge Todd Plewe rescheduled the multi-week trial to begin Feb. 8, 2027, and set a trial readiness court date for Jan. 8, 2027, at 9 a.m., as well as another motions hearing set for all-day Oct. 15.
“Some motions were filed after the motions deadline by the defense, based upon issues that they believe need to be litigated prior to this case going to a jury trial,” Plewe said Friday in court, providing a case overview.
The possibility of postponing the trial was initially raised Monday during a daylong motions hearing for Leonard, where defense attorney John Moran said he was prepared to face the ire of the court over his new filings.
“But I have an ethical responsibility to Miss Leonard,” Moran told the court Monday.
Plewe responded he understood and said he would rather not be in court later on an issue of ineffective counsel.
“I think The People understand that, and, I understand that we don't want to try this case twice,” Plewe said.
The delay allots prosecutors time to respond to motions filed earlier this week by Moran and defense attorney Benjamin Currier. Those motions came out of earlier litigation from an Aug. 13 hearing and the defense now alleges discovery violations, and is making another pass at suppressing the cellphone data, claiming a basis of prolonged, illegal seizure by police detectives.
During the motions hearing Monday, Moran lamented that investigators tainted their investigation by zeroing in on one theory of murder-suicide based on years-worth of Leonard’s medical records, which he said were obtained by police illegally. It had since been ruled those records are inadmissible at trial.
He argued the entirety of the investigation was permeated by the medical records.
“For law enforcement to illegally gain those records that became the nucleus of this case… is… and well, you get the point because we’ve been here two days,” Moran said. “Law enforcement created more errors than I have seen in a case of this magnitude. Suppression of the warrants in this case are necessitated by how law enforcement got there.”
The defense argued the cellphone warrant should be inadmissible because it was not genuinely independent of the medical records, which were used to show probable cause in the initial warrant.
Christina Donahue, a special prosecutor with the Colorado Attorney General’s office and co-counsel to District Attorney Jeremy Reed, led arguments for the prosecution Monday.
Since the state held the burden of proof, a few of its witnesses were called to the stand, mainly detectives manning the investigation at early onset and during the years before the indictment. Morning testimony began with retired Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Ben Russell.
In the days following Annika’s death, Russell was asked by Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office detectives to meet with Leonard, who was receiving extensive care at a medical center in Grand Junction. Instead, he ended interviewing her mother Zada Leonard, and segments of that recording were played for the court.
Donahue argued investigators had reasons separate of the medical records to search the phone.
“Ultimately, what this boils down to is the reason the phone was searched is because of how revealing they are,” Donahue said.
She argued phones in general can show critical evidence in criminal investigations, and that Leonard’s phone was seized before police obtained the medical records, as it was found near the head of the bed with vomit on it around where Annika was discovered.
Plewe did not rule from the bench Monday, but said he would issue a written order.
awatson@the-journal.com
