PORT ANGELES — Robert Gene Covarrubias will be arraigned May 8 for the murder of Melissa Leigh Carter — almost three years to the day after he was convicted of the crime, Clallam County Superior Court Judge George L.Wood decided Friday.
The second trial of Covarrubias, 28 — who has asserted his innocence since 15-year-old Carter’s death in 2004 — is scheduled to begin by July 7.
He will be in custody in the Clallam County jail after he is processed out of Clallam Bay Corrections Center, which was to take place sometime this weekend.
His bail has been set at $1 million.
He had been transferred to Clallam Bay from a prison out of the state where he had begun to serve a 34¬½-year sentence.
Wood set the arraignment date to comply with a Jan. 6 state Court of Appeals decision.
The appeals court unanimously decided that Covarrubias’ first trial, which led to his April 21, 2006 conviction for first-degree murder, was tainted by an unfair trial and ordered a new one.
Carter was 15 when she was found raped and strangled in the bushes bordering Olympic Discovery Trail just east of the Port Angeles Red Lion Inn on Dec. 26, 2004.
She had vanished three days earlier after attending a party at the Chinook Motel about a mile up First Street. Covarrubias was at the same party.
Covarrubias, who had listed his address as Port Angeles when he was arrested on investigation of drug charges in Seattle in 2001, had spent time in prison for illegal drug sales, burglary and theft.
He had been released from prison 17 days before Carter was killed.
