By Bob Allen
The trial of a former Union University student accused of murdering his fiancee has been postponed from May 12 until Sept. 28 due to a backlog in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation crime lab.
Charles Pittman, charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the death of Olivia Greenlee, 21, whose body was found dead from a gunshot wound in a car parked on a campus parking lot in February 2014, is scheduled to be in court again June 8 for a status update. That is his deadline to change his plea from not guilty to guilty before the case proceeds to trial.
According to the Jackson Sun, the TBI has yet to return DNA, ballistic and blood splatter analysis tests to either the prosecution or defense. “Basically we haven’t seen a large majority of the evidence,” said public defender George Googe. “So we’re not ready to go to trial, just like the state’s not ready to go to trial yet.”
Googe said the backlog of data that is slowing the process is due in part to Holly Bobo, a 20-year-old nursing student who disappeared April 13, 2011, from her family home in Darden, Tenn., after being seen walking into the woods outside her home with a man wearing camouflage. Her remains were found about 20 miles away in September 2014, and her death was ruled a homicide.
Corinth Baptist Church in Darden, Tenn., held a memorial service on Sunday, April 12, one day before the four-year anniversary of her disappearance.
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