Accused cop killer seeks trial changes

Lawyers representing Marco Antonio Topete seek to push back the accused cop killer's trial a year and half - and into another city.

A Wednesday filing in Yolo County Superior Court aims to delay Topete's capital murder trial to May 2010. The Arbuckle resident's lawyers, Hayes Gable III and Thomas Purtell, argued they need the time to pore through nearly 2,000 pages of documents as well as physical evidence from the case.

The attorneys also said they plan to strike a deal with District Attorney Jeff W. Reisig to move the trial out of Yolo County, and to file a change-of-venue motion if those talks break down.

Judge Timothy Fall is scheduled to set the trial date at a hearing 9 a.m. Friday in Woodland.

The former convict and accused gang member faces a possible death penalty if convicted in the June 15 shooting death of Jose Antonio "Tony" Lopez, a Yolo County sheriff's deputy. Lopez was the county's first deputy to be murdered on duty since 1943.

District Attorney Jeff W. Reisig announced in October he would seek the death penalty for Topete, who also was indicted in August on charges of evading officers, child endangerment and gang membership. If jurors convict him, they must unanimously agree to a death sentence, with the alternative being life imprisonment with no parole.

The Yolo sheriff's department says Lopez, responding to reports of a suspected drunken driver, pursued Topete's vehicle from Interstate 5 to the remote Dunnigan road where he was killed.

Deputies arrested Topete at a freeway rest area nearby after a 12-hour manhunt, during which he allegedly left his infant daughter behind in his abandoned car.

He is being held without bail at the Sacramento County Jail.

Topete had been on parole for a 1998 shooting that led to a nine-year prison term. He was released in March 2007 and already had been returned to jail once, in November, for a parole violation.