BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – A lawyer for a man accused of killing a University of Vermont student says his case is being delayed because he has to watch hundreds of hours of sexually explicit videos.
Attorney Lorin Duckman represents Brian Rooney in a sexual assault case unrelated to the aggravated murder charge Rooney is facing in the death of 21-year-old Michelle Gardner-Quinn of Arlington, Va.
During a status conference Friday, Duckman told Vermont District Court Judge Michael Kupersmith it was taking him longer than expected to go through the evidence against his client.
Duckman said he didn’t want to interview witnesses who hadn’t seen the images until he had gone through all of them.
Kupersmith suggested Duckman have an investigator go through the electronic evidence.
“I’m not sure you can hire someone to look at these,” Duckman replied.
After the court hearing, Duckman said some of the tapes contained images of Rooney while others were commercial, but that he had an obligation to look at them all. He estimated there were “hundreds and hundreds” of hours of video.
Rooney, who wasn’t in court for the proceeding, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
If convicted of aggravated murder, he would be sentenced to life without parole. He is being held without bail at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.
Gardner-Quinn disappeared on Oct. 7 in downtown Burlington.
Rooney met her on the street when he lent her his cell phone. Her body was discovered six days later in Richmond. She had been sexually assaulted and killed.
While police were investigating the disappearance, they developed evidence leading to a number of sexual assault charges against Rooney both in Chittenden County and in the Northeast Kingdom, where Rooney once lived.
Some of that evidence allegedly includes a video recording of Rooney performing sex acts on a woman while she was unconscious.
“The allegation is he had sexual contact at a time when she was incapable of consenting,” Duckman said.
Rooney has pleaded not guilty to a charge of repeatedly sexually assaulting a girlfriend between 2002 and 2005.
Meanwhile, his attorneys in the murder case told Kupersmith they still have witnesses to interview.
AP-ES-06-08-07 1637EDT
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