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<\/div>\nWEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A Florida judge has reluctantly delayed the trial of a woman accused of dressing like a clown and fatally shooting her lover\u2019s wife more than 30 years ago after defense attorneys said they\u2019re having a hard time contacting witnesses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The trial for Sheila Keen-Warren was supposed to begin June 3. But on Tuesday Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Scott Suskauer agreed to what could be a four-month delay, the Palm Beach Post reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Suskauer said he had already cleared his schedule, delaying other trials and hearings to be able to preside over a three-week trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThink about the impact it has on me. I have a duty to the public,\u201d Suskauer told the lawyers. \u201cYou also have a victim\u2019s family that has waited a long time for justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This is the sixth time the trial has been delayed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It was May 1990 when Marlene Warren opened her door and was shot in the face by a clown delivering carnations and balloons to her home in Wellington, a suburb of West Palm Beach, court records show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The former Sheila Keen, rumored to be having an affair with Marlene Warren\u2019s husband, Michael Warren, was considered a suspect, but the case against her seemed thin. Two nights before the killing, a woman showed up at a costume store telling clerks she urgently needed a clown suit, an orange wig, white gloves, a red nose and enough white makeup to cover her face completely. One of the clerks identified her in a photo lineup, but the other clerk wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She later married Michael Warren and they were living in Virginia when investigators said DNA provided the evidence they needed to arrest her in 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott agreed the latest delay was unavoidable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI want this defendant to be fully prepared for trial,\u201d Scott said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to deal with appellate issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The defense team \u2014 Richard Lubin, Greg Rosenfeld and Amy Morse \u2014 blamed Scott, writing that he didn\u2019t provide them with names and addresses of key witnesses who are now scattered across the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The defense team also said they need to view evidence, including hair fibers, two balloons, a Publix bag and car rental papers, that was not in an evidence locker at the sheriff\u2019s office. Those items had been sent to forensics for further review, they said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCustomarily, a criminal prosecution is straightforward: The police investigate a crime, the police arrest a suspect, and the state prosecutes the suspect,\u201d but this case hasn\u2019t been handled that way, they wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cFollowing the arrest, the police and state continued their investigation,\u201d they wrote. \u201cThis backwards prosecution has hampered Ms. Keen-Warren\u2019s ability to prepare for trial.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Because so much time has passed since the killing, sworn depositions have been taken from some witnesses who either can\u2019t or won\u2019t appear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis is a very difficult situation,\u201d Lubin told the newspaper. \u201cThis is a long-ago event. Witnesses are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Some of them are dead. Others are debilitated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A Florida judge has reluctantly delayed the trial of a woman accused of dressing like a clown and fatally shooting her lover\u2019s wife more than 30 years ago after defense attorneys said they\u2019re having a hard time contacting witnesses. The trial for Sheila Keen-Warren was supposed to begin June […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1091759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-odd-but-true"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}