The trial for three men — including Seattle rapper Lathan Moses Echols, who performs as Lil Mosey — accused of raping a woman at a party in Randle in January 2020 has been delayed until December 2022.
Echols and his two codefendants, Joshua Darrow and Francisco Prater, were initially scheduled to face trial in Lewis County Superior Court this week.
The defendants’ attorneys informed Judge James Lawler during a trial confirmation hearing on July 14 that the July 18 trial would need to be delayed due to scheduling conflicts with the attorneys’ other cases.
The parties met back in the courtroom Friday morning to reschedule the two-week trial for late December when all three attorneys’ schedules lined up.
Echols’ attorney, Shane O’Rourke, opposed the delay and filed a motion asking the court to separate Echols’ case from his codefendants’ so that Echols could have his case tried sooner.
“My client’s rights to a speedy trial are going to be violated,” O’Rourke said of the decision to delay the trial to December.
The standard deadline for courts to meet a defendant’s right to speedy trial is 60 days from the date charges were filed, which in Echols’ case was April 2, 2021. Echols, Darrow and Prater previously waived their rights to speedy trial, which allowed the court to extend that deadline past the initial 60-days, though defendants must re-waive their speedy trial rights to further extend the deadline.
O’Rourke also expressed concerns that a trial with three codefendants would become “a circus” due to the number of people involved and schedules to accommodate.
While Prosecuting Attorney Paul Masiello acknowledged O’Rourke’s speedy trial concerns, he argued against severing Echols’ case from his codefendants.
“Consolidation minimizes the number of times that the alleged victim has to come forward and live this experience that she went through, so I think that’s an important factor,” he said Friday.
Lawler said he agreed with Masiello’s concerns and denied O’Rourke’s motion to separate the cases.
“This is not going to be ‘a circus,’ I won’t let that happen. And I only want to try this case once,” Lawler said.
“It’s not fair for the alleged victim in this case to have to go through this twice.”
The victim reportedly told police that she had gone to a party in Randle to see Echols on Jan. 6, 2020, consumed alcohol and eventually blacked out. Echols, 20, and Prater, 19, are accused of having sex with her “while she was incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless or mentally incapacitated,” according to court documents. Darrow, 20, is accused of restraining the alleged victim during the incident.
Trial is now scheduled to begin Monday, Dec. 12 and end Friday, Dec. 23.
