CONWAY -- A judge on Thursday postponed a pretrial hearing for a woman charged with murdering a Conway couple last year after her attorney said he needed to check on some "medical issues" involving his client.
Anastasia Roberts, 18, of Conway is one of four teenagers charged in the July 21, 2015, shooting deaths of Robert and Patricia Cogdell, both 66, of Conway.
Roberts appeared to have been crying when she arrived in Faulkner County Circuit Court for a hearing. Wearing striped jail clothes, handcuffs and long, braided pigtails, Roberts said nothing audible as she stood beside her attorney, James Wyatt.
Wyatt told Judge Troy Braswell that he wanted to "err on the side of caution" regarding the medical concerns.
Neither Wyatt nor Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Hugh Finkelstein would comment further on the medical issues after the hearing.
"She was obviously under stress," Finkelstein said.
Braswell set Roberts' next pretrial hearing for Nov. 7. Her trial is tentatively set to begin Dec. 12.
A plea agreement is "definitely in the realm of possibilities," Finkelstein told reporters. "We're negotiating."
He said the prosecution still views Roberts as "the least culpable of all four" teenage defendants.
There were some expectations that Roberts might change her plea Thursday as two of her co-defendants did at pretrial hearings. In May, Wyatt withdrew his client's request to transfer her case to juvenile court. He said at the time that the defense was still working out issues with prosecutors and said "it would be premature" to proceed with the transfer request "if something else works out with the state."
If a juvenile transfer hearing happens, that would take any plea agreement "off the table," Finkelstein said.
More spectators than usual were in the small courtroom Thursday. Among them were relatives of Roberts and the Cogdells.
Roberts' boyfriend, Connor Atchley, 18, of Greenbrier, and the boy the Cogdells were raising, Justin Staton, 15, have pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and other offenses and been sentenced to prison. A fourth defendant, Hunter Drexler, 19, of Clinton, remains jailed on capital murder and other charges and is awaiting an October hearing on whether to transfer his case to juvenile court.
The Cogdells had been Staton's legal guardians since at least 2010. They had thought he was their grandson until genetic testing proved their son was not his father. They still sought and were granted guardianship.
State Desk on 09/23/2016