The court-appointed attorney for the woman accused for stealing more than $100,000 in funds earmarked for trips for World War II veterans filed a motion to withdraw from the case, but on Monday agreed to continue representing LaVeta Dianne Miller.
Defense attorney Robert Anderson said he’d lost three months of discovery time because his client stopped returning his phone calls after her preliminary hearing in April. Barton County District Judge Ron Svaty asked Anderson to stay on the case, which was set to go to trial in September, and Miller waived her right to a speedy trial. It now appears the case won’t be heard until sometime in 2014.
Miller is the former director of Central Prairie RC&D, once based in Great Bend. She has entered a plea of not guilty two counts of theft by deception. The state alleges that money was stolen from the Honor Flight program, intended to give World War II veterans expense-paid trips to Washington, D.C.
Anderson said he filed a motion to withdraw as her attorney after he was unable to contact Miller by phone, even after sending two certified letters. But after nearly three months of silence, Anderson told Judge Svaty, “she called me out of the blue.”
While his initial position was that he would not represent Miller, Anderson said he was willing to hear her explanation on Monday. If Svaty and Miller agreed, he said, “I would continue to accept that assignment, but begrudgingly. I’d have to ask for a continuance for the jury trial.”
“This is a known tactic to delay trial,” Svaty said, adding he wasn’t saying that was Miller’s intent. He agreed to hear her explanation.
“I have total faith in Mr. Anderson,” she began. “This is not his fault; it’s mine.” Miller said she hasn’t been able to find employment since her preliminary hearing and has been forced to move twice. She has had trouble paying her phone bill and keeping a working telephone.
“(My phone) works now ... sometimes,” she said. “But I don’t have the money to get another one.”
With her belongings in boxes after moving to a camper in a local mobile home park, Miller said she’s also been unable to find the documents needed to assist with her case. “I have just never been so frustrated in my life. I have never not had a job,” she said. Miller said “an organization I belong to” is helping her, and she would give Anderson a list of phone numbers of people who could relay messages.
Svaty warned Miller that she has to find a way to communicate with her attorney, whoever takes the case. After a meeting in the judge’s chambers with Anderson and Barton County Attorney Douglas Matthews, the judge asked Anderson to remain on the case, and he agreed.
But Svaty had a stern warning for the defendant: “If I leave him in and he says, ‘I can’t get hold of her,’ I’m revoking your bond and you’re going to jail,” Svaty said. “That will solve the problems of contact.”
Restarting the 180-day clock usually allotted for a speedy trial would put the date for Miller’s trial in January 2014, but another longer-than-usual jury trial – for accused murderer Jeffrey Wade Chapman – is already scheduled for that month. Chapman’s trial is expected to run for two weeks, staring Jan. 27. Miller’s trial is expect to take one week.