Baylor athlete’s murder trial set for August

By Jeff Caplan Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)WACO, Texas Carlton Dotson, the former Baylor University basketball player charged with murder in the death of teammate Patrick Dennehy, will go on trial in August. State District Judge George Allen set a tentative Aug. 9 trial date Friday after lead defense attorney Russ Hunt said he needs additional time to study evidence. Hunt said he has reviewed “99 percent” of “10 to 15 pounds of documents.” The trial had been set for March. The judge also set a June 18 deadline for filing defense motions. A pretrial hearing on those motions is set for July 15. “I think the dates are very reasonable,” Hunt said. “We will continue doing what we’ve been doing, and that is discovery. We will now be talking to people we think we need to assist us in preparation for the case.” Dotson, 21, was brought into the courtroom for Friday’s brief pretrial hearing. Shackled at the wrists and ankles, he sat, mostly motionless and expressionless, between Hunt and assistant defense attorney Abel Reyna. Dotson is charged in the slaying of Dennehy, 21, who had been missing for six weeks before his body was found July 25 in a field near a gravel pit southeast of Waco. An autopsy report showed that Dennehy had been shot twice in the head. Dotson was arrested July 21 in his home state of Maryland and has been jailed in Waco since October. He faces five years to life in prison if convicted. Hunt said he is “not seriously entertaining” plans to seek a change of venue, although he has not ruled it out. “I feel comfortable trying it in Waco,” he said. “But we might come up with something that we haven’t thought of before, and perhaps we’ll ask for a change of venue.” On Thursday, Baylor President Robert B. Sloan Jr. said the university’s seven-month internal investigation found that Baylor missed “red flags” that could have stopped wrongdoing by former basketball coach Dave Bliss, who resigned in August after revelations of major NCAA violations. The allegations arose in the wake of Dennehy’s slaying.