Ewing shooting case delayed until Dec. 20

PALMER — Two people prosecutors are holding responsible for the shooting death of a Mat-Su Borough assemblyman’s son won’t go to trial until December at the earliest.

Jerome Capps and Dana Sanders appeared before Palmer Superior Court Judge Gregory Heath Friday. Capps’ attorney, Greg Parvin, asked Heath for more time to gather evidence together and file motions on his client’s behalf.

“There is an extraordinary amount of discovery and a lot of investigation that needs to be done,” Parvin said.

Heath agreed to set a new trial date of Dec. 20. Parvin didn’t seem confident that the trial would make that date, saying he anticipated additional hearings following the new deadline for motions in the case of Oct. 1.

Neither Capps nor Sanders is accused of actually pulling the trigger and firing the bullet that killed Jeremy Ewing, the son of borough assemblyman Mark Ewing, on Aug. 29, 2009.

Instead, prosecutors allege Capps and Sanders put Ewing up to burglarizing a man’s home. That man, Thomas Chapman, was the one who shot Ewing when he awoke to find him rummaging around his house and after the two engaged in a brief scuffle.

With scheduling out of the way, the rest of Friday’s hearing was spent figuring out exactly how much leeway Capps should have in filing motions on his own behalf.

Prosecutor Trina Sears said she wanted motions to go through Parvin. Everyone agreed that was a good idea. But there was still the matter of one motion — a request for certain pieces of evidence — that Capps had already filed.

Sears said Parvin should have made more clear that he had thoroughly reviewed the motion, “before making the state respond to 50 pages from a defendant who has lots of time in jail.”

She added that Parvin and Capps have asked for different pieces of evidence and the process had the potential to get out of hand.

Parvin noted that Heath had told him to file the motion.

“I find myself in a situation of getting sideways with my client, getting held in contempt by this court for failing to follow a lawful order or getting sideways with the state,” he said.

In the end, Heath ordered that from now on everything goes through Parvin, and that Parvin’s role as attorney, “should be asserted a little more.”

If Parvin and Capps can’t make that system work, Heath said, he’ll bring Capps back and see if he’d like to move forward without the help of an attorney. But, the judge said, with the case moving into the motions phase, he suspects Capps will want to make use of Parvin’s expertise.

Chapman, the man who shot Ewing, has only ever been referred to as a victim in the case. No charges have been filed against him. There were 50 marijuana plants found in the home when Ewing was killed. Chapman’s son-in-law has said previously that the plants were for personal use.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.