Defense team asks judge to block firearms evidence or delay trial in 2016 Lawrence Co. double murder

A man accused of killing a father and son in Lawrence County is now seeking to have firearms evidence kept out of the trial.

He's also asking the court to provide extra funding for a mental evaluation and related expert testimony. 

The motions were filed Tuesday in the case by Earl Coburn's defense attorney. Coburn is charged with capital murder in the deaths of Micah White and Hubert White in September 2016. 

The victims' family members said at the time that the murders stemmed from a custody battle. Micah White was Coburn's former son-in-law. 

A hearing in the case was set for Tuesday. Coburn's defense team said an updated mental evaluation in November found Coburn unfit to stand trial, and the doctor who evaluated him was set to testify at the hearing. 

As for the firearms, analysis reports about evidence found at the crime scenes and dated Feb. 27, 2019 weren't made available to the defense team until this month, according to a motion filed Tuesday. 

That motion states a defense investigator had been asking about the reports as early as January 2018, including in November 2021, when the investigator received the firearm, casings and projectiles from the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office. 

Defense attorneys say receiving the reports so close to the start of the trial means they won't have time to conduct their own tests to replicate and verify or disconfirm the prosecution's results.

As such, they're asking the judge to either keep the firearms evidence and any testimony about it from the trial; delay the trial until the testing can be completed; or remove the possibility of Coburn being sentenced to death if convicted by the trial jury.