Trial of disgraced deputy Dennis Perkins will be rescheduled after judge grants appeal
LIVINGSTON - Fired sheriff's deputy Dennis Perkins will be allowed a new trial date due to a scheduling conflict with his attorney, a judge decided Wednesday.
An appeals court granted attorney Jarrett Ambeau's application asking for the trial to be rescheduled. Jury selection was set to begin in Perkins' case on July 12.
A new trial date has not been set at this time.
Ambeau argued that the original start date would conflict with a separate death penalty case in which he is representing another defendant in another parish.
Last month, a judge denied Ambeau's request to move Perkins' trial date. Wednesday's decision reversed that ruling.
"I think she got the matter to continue wrong," Ambeau said at the time. "I have a death penalty case going on the same day in East Feliciana Parish which I've been hired for two and a half years before this event even occurred."
Perkins and his wife Cynthia, a former school teacher, are both charged in a high-profile child sex crimes case. The couple has filed for divorce since they were first arrested in 2019.
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A judge granted a motion giving the two separate trials. The Louisiana Attorney General's Office, which is prosecuting the pair, filed an appeal aiming to have them tried together. That appeal was denied Wednesday.