SOURCE: http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=7C85B8603D8943A6B41DD946B24D3F67&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbransontrilakesnews.com%2Fnews_free%2Farticle_94535988-7146-11e6-9cf5-873d1dce5033.html&c=7327844384548654379&mkt=en-usREAD ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE
BRANSON NEWS:
The status of a man accused of killing a 6-year-old girl in a Branson motel room last year could be decided soon.
A court date has been scheduled for Sept. 8 in the case of John Roberts, 56, who is accused of killing Jasmine Miller in his residence at an extended-stay motel in February 2015.
According to Taney County Prosecutor Jeff Merrell, the court date has been set to schedule a formal hearing in the case. The case has been largely inactive for more than a year while Roberts has been undergoing mental evaluations.
In May 2015, Roberts’ attorney requested a state mental evaluation, and in September 2015, Roberts was declared unfit for trial. In September, he was ordered by Judge Eric Eighmy to undergo treatment until he is mentally able to assist his attorney in his own defense. However, Roberts then had to wait several months for a bed to open at a facility in Fulton. He was eventually committed in December, according to online court records.
In early July, the online docket for the case showed that an order filed by the Department of Mental Health found that the Roberts is “permanently incompetent to stand trial.” The online listing was later changed to state only that a mental exam had been filed and sent to Taney County Associate Circuit Judge Eric Eighmy for review.
Merrell filed an objection to the proposed order. The court was originally scheduled to review the order Aug. 11, but that date was delayed to Aug. 24 and then again to Sept. 8.
Background
It was Feb. 21, 2015, when Miller was reported missing. Both Miller and Roberts were relatively new to the motel. Miller and her parents had recently moved from Springfield. Roberts had lived at a Branson apartment building as recently as January when he was charged with stealing $70 from another resident of the facility.
Police responded to the call of a missing girl at 6:20 p.m. The city issued an alert to residents in the vicinity of the Windsor Inn at 7:15 p.m. about the missing girl. At a later time (police and court documents do not state when Miller was found) Miller was found dead in Roberts’ room. Her unclothed body was under his bed, according to documents later obtained by the Branson Tri-Lakes News.
Roberts was charged with first-degree murder. The probable cause statement used to file the charges was brief, but it stated that Roberts lured Miller into his room with snacks and “caused her death by strangulation.” Several words after that phrase were redacted from the police report.
On March 2, 2015, Roberts was granted a change of judge from one Taney County Associate Circuit judge, Tony Williams, to the other, Eighmy. Later that month, Roberts’ attorney tried to have the case dismissed for insufficient probable cause, claiming that the probable cause statement from the Branson Police Department did not contain enough information.
Eighmy ruled that, while the probable cause statement was “exceptionally brief,” it did identify the crime, the date and location, the name of the accused and that the victim is identified by her initials. He ruled that the document’s brevity did not violate Roberts’ state or federal constitutional rights.
More details
In June, the Branson Tri-Lakes News obtained a 550-page document from the Missouri Children’s Division of the Department of Social Services detailing its investigation into a series of hotline calls and accusations of neglect of Jasmine Miller.
An investigator interviewed Roberts in jail and, in the interview, Roberts admitted to strangling Miller in an attempt to “scare her.” Roberts told the investigator that he had been on “devil poison,” or methamphetamine, the night of Miller’s death. He also said he couldn’t remember everything clearly, but Jasmine came over to his room and he saw that she was stealing cakes, and he grabbed her with his hands and meant to “scare her,” the report stated. Roberts also told the investigator he did not know how Miller’s clothes came off, but suspected it was from dragging her across the floor and putting her under the bed.
The report also cited neglect as a factor in Miller’s murder. It stated that she “was unsupervised outside at a busy motel on the 76 Boulevard strip in Branson, and she walked to John Roberts’ room alone, went in alone and was murdered. Jason and Laurie Ballew did not know that she had gone into the room because they were not providing appropriate supervision of the child at the time of her disappearance.”
Powered by WPeMatico