Retrial date set in triple slayings

• By JOE GYAN JR.
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 10, 2009 - Page: 1B

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Walter “Joey’’ Koon got new attorneys and a trial date Thursday, 16 years after he allegedly killed his estranged wife and her parents and two years after a federal judge threw out his conviction and death sentence.

The 64-year-old Koon appeared in state District Court in Baton Rouge wearing an orange prison jumpsuit but did not speak during the status conference.

Prosecutor Dana Cummings requested an Oct. 13 trial date and District Judge Mike Erwin granted her request over the objection of Nelvil Hollingsworth, one of Koon’s court-appointed attorneys.
Erwin assured Hollings-worth that all defense motions will be heard before the case goes to trial.

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore III said his office intends to seek the death penalty if Koon is once again convicted as charged.

Hollingsworth said outside the courthouse that it may be several years before the case is tried.

“We have an obligation to file motions,’’ he said.

Erwin ordered Koon held without bond.

Koon, of Denham Springs, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the March 5, 1993, shooting deaths of 37-year-old Michelle Guidry Koon and her parents, 73-year-old Richard Guidry and 66-year-old Felicie Guidry.

The three were killed at Koon’s in-laws’ Audubon Avenue home in Baton Rouge.
Koon was convicted in 1995 and condemned to die, but U.S. District Judge James Brady granted him a new trial in February 2007.

Brady ruled Koon should be retried because the performance of his court-appointed trial attorney, Kevin Monahan, was “egregious, unprofessional and constitutionally deficient.’’

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans agreed in May 2008.

Brady said Monahan erred in trying the case alone, hiring a mental-health expert the day before the trial and neglecting to interview the lone eyewitness to the crime.

The 5th Circuit said the eyewitness, Sarah Robinson, was with Koon when he drove to his in-laws’ home, where Michelle Guidry Koon was staying.