Judges to set trial date for former student in July

Federal judges will wait until July to set a trial date for a former Pitt student accused of… Federal judges will wait until July to set a trial date for a former Pitt student accused of making threats that caused police to evacuate two University buildings in April 2008.

The U.S. Attorney’s office extended, for a second time, the deadline for Louisa Ewuresi Nkrumah, of Harrisburg, to file pre-trial motions. Pre-trial motions are anything that would affect the need to have or the conduct of a trial.

The deadline for Nkrumah — charged with using a telephone to “willfully threaten … to unlawfully damage or destroy” the Cathedral of Learning and Posvar Hall — to file her pre-trial deadlines was extended first from April 15 to June 1 and then again from June 1 to July 1. In both cases, the deadlines were extended to give Nkrumah’s attorney, Cynthia Eddy, “reasonable time necessary” to prepare a defense, according to court documents.

Eddy declined to comment on the case, saying “the communications between me and my client are confidential.”

Nkrumah declined to comment, as well.

It’s common for pre-trial motions to be extended.

Adam Goldstein, an attorney for the Student Press Law Center, said he would be surprised if Nkrumah’s trial lasted more than a week. He said he thought there would be “a relative minimum of evidence — a few core things that link a person or fail to link someone to whatever the phone was and whatever the time was.” Longer trials, he said, tend to occur when cases require a large amount of evidence. Cases for tech fraud, he said, tend to take longer because jurors must sift through many documents before deciding on the case.