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Guess what! Paul Kovacich, the pensioned Placer County sheriff’s sergeant accused of killing his wife a quarter century ago, is getting a new lawyer. During an appearance before Superior Court Judge Larry Gaddis in Auburn last week, it appeared that John Lyman, a deputy public defender, will be the next attorney to represent Kovacich, who remains free on $1.5 million bail. The judge was informed that Kovacich’s most recent ex-lawyer, John Spurling, had left the public defender’s staff. Spurling was appointed to represent Kovacich a few months ago after Tom Leupp and Clyde Blackmon, the ex-cop’s private lawyers, said they were leaving the case because their client could no longer afford to pay them.
Gaddis said he wants to know ASAP if Lyman or someone else will be
handling Kovacich’s defense. He set December 19 to consider all motions
in the case, including an anticipated one for a change of venue for
Kovacich’s trial, which is tentatively set to start next March. It is expected Kovacich’s attorney will claim that extensive news
coverage of the case, especially since Kovacich’s arrest on a grand
jury indictment in September of 2006, will prevent him from receiving
an unbiased jury trial in Placer and nearby counties. A gag order issued by the court soon after Kovacich’s arrest last year
prohibits anyone connected with the case from talking publicly about it. Janet Kovacich was a 27-year-old mother of two young children in
September of 2002 when she disappeared from her Skyridge area home in
Auburn. Auburn police investigators claim that Kovacich shot her in the
head and sunk her body in Rollins Lake, a reservoir on the Bear River
northeast of Colfax. Investigators also claim that a piece of skull with what appears to be
a bullet hole in it was washed ashore at the lake in the mid-1990s.
They claim, too, that DNA testing conducted by the California
Department of Justice showed the piece of skull came from the missing
Janet Kovacich. Kovacich has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. His children, now adults, helped arrange for his freedom on bail.
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