Federal prosecutors asked a judge to set a trial date for next summer for a former soldier accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her and her family.
In a motion filed on Friday, US Attorney David Huber requested an Aug. 4 trial date for Steve Green.
Huber said defense attorneys wanted a later trial date that would benefit Green as "memories begin to fade" of the attack in March last year. Four others who served with Green have been convicted in the attack.
Huber said Green's attorneys have argued the trial should not be scheduled prior to April 2009.
Such a timetable "unduly burdens the public's right to a speedy trial," Huber said, noting it would be 30 months after Green's indictment and 21 months after prosecutors said they intended to seek the death penalty.
Huber said the two sides cannot reach agreement on a trial date and asked a judge to set the date.
A call on Saturday morning to a defense attorney's office was not immediately returned.
The next hearing in the case is set for tomorrow in Louisville.
Green, of Midland, Texas, is charged with the rape and murder of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and killing of three other members of her family.
The former private in the Fort Campbell-based 101st Airborne Division was discharged from the Army before being arrested in North Carolina last year. He has pleaded not guilty in the case.
Huber said other death penalty cases of "more complexity and breadth" have been litigated in federal courts in under two years.
Huber said it is not a case in which the defense has to review DNA or other complicated scientific evidence. Instead, the government's case against Green relies largely on the testimony of other soldiers accused of participating in the attack with Green, he said.
"In a case which is based almost entirely on testimonial evidence, delay inures only to the benefit of the defendant as memories begin to fade and the events of March 12, 2006, grow more distant by the day," he said.
"To the extent that certain witnesses in this case continue to serve in the United States Army and are deployed to Iraq and other locations, placing them once again [in] combat, this case presents the very real possibility that witnesses may not be available for trial," he said.
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