The trial of a now more than four-year-old murder case may finally get underway in Morgan County Court early this upcoming year.
39-year-old Kenneth J. Acree of Murrayville was in court for a pretrial hearing Friday afternoon. Acree faces 3 counts of first-degree murder and a single count of concealment of a homicidal death in the shooting death of 32-year-old Robert Schofield in October 2020 near Nortonville.
Visiting 7th Circuit Judge Ryan Cadigan set a final pre-trial hearing for January, 17th with the case then set for a jury trial to begin on Tuesday, March 25th.
Morgan County State’s Attorney Gray Noll says after a number of delays in the case, he is hopeful this trial date will hold. “The case obviously has been pending for four-plus years now and I certainly would like to thank the Schofield family for their patience in waiting for this to finally be resolved.
But given that it has been pending for four years, there have been pre-trial motions that have already been heard, discovery has already been exchanged, and there are currently no pre-trial motions that would necessarily move the date from the March setting date.”
The trial had been set to start this past Tuesday until Acree’s longtime defense attorney W. Scott Hankin of Springfield withdrew from the case in early November.
Since then Daniel Fultz of Springfield has taken over as defense counsel along with Morgan County Public Defender Devin Vaughn.
Noll says there currently are no pending motions before the court in the case however, the recent change in counsel could delay the case further. “Obviously anything could change. The new attorneys could find something and want to file some sort of pre-trial motion that the previous attorneys did not.
So it’s possible that the case could be continued from the March date but the judge has certainly made it clear to both parties that he would like to see this resolved sooner than later.”
A year ago, Hankin filed motions suggesting Acree may claim self-defense during the trial. The motions requested would allow the defense to present character testimony about Schofield and prevent the prosecution from referring to him as a victim during proceedings.
Schofield was reported missing after he did not return home from work on October 4th, 2020. Four days later his body was discovered buried in a field off of Gobbler Road in rural Murrayville.
Acree was arrested one day later on October 9th and then in January of 2021, both wives of the decadent, 30-year-old Sara M. Schofield, and the accused, 37-year-old |Laura C. Acree, were arrested and each charged with concealment of a homicidal death and obstructing justice.
Each of their cases has been continued until after the first of the year.