NASHVILLE – It's been a year since a Rocky Mount funeral home director was charged with having his wife killed, but a backlog at the SBI continues to hold up his trial, attorneys said Wednesday.
Mark Bowling spent his birthday Wednesday coming back to Nash County where he stands accused of soliciting at least two women to kill his wife a little more than a year ago.
Telegram photo / Alan Campbell |
N.C. Superior Court Judge Quentin Sumner listens to Assistant District Attorney Keith Werner speak Wednesday at the Nash County Courthouse in Nashville.
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Shackled and decked out in an orange jumpsuit, Bowling has spent most of the past year in Central Prison in Raleigh waiting on his defense attorneys and prosecutors to prepare for what's expected to be one of the biggest murder trials ever in the county.
Bowling, 37, is charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the shooting death of 45-year-old Julie Bowling, who was gunned down on Dec. 9, 2006, in her garage on River Glenn. Bowling and his alleged mistress and accomplice, 28-year-old Rose Vincent, both face the death penalty if convicted.
At a hearing Wednesday in N.C. Superior Court in Nash County, the defense team of Tommy Moore and Tom Sallenger and Assistant District Attorney Keith Werner told Judge Quentin Sumner that delays in getting SBI reports are holding up the proceedings.
"We are ready," Moore told the judge. "We have a lot of motions filed, and we plan to file a lot more.
"But we don't feel like any of the motions can be heard until we get all the (reports and evidence)."
The defense filed a motion for discovery this past week, officially asking for SBI supplemental reports.
"It's been a year, and we can't go forward with any of our motions until we know what we're dealing with," Moore said.
Werner echoed Moore's frustration, telling Sumner that he also is waiting on those reports.
Sumner asked Werner to call the SBI in an effort to speed up the process.
"Let them know that I'm just inquiring right now, but come January, that posture might change," Sumner said, adding that a court order might be forthcoming.
Sumner scheduled the next hearing for Mark Bowling for Jan. 28, in which several motions are expected to be heard.
The defense filed motions in June to exclude the public from all pretrial hearings, place a gag order on anyone involved with the hearings and seal the transcripts of the hearings until after the trial. Other pretrial motions include requests to limit how much of the autopsy report is used during trial; a request to pick a jury from another county; and a request to ban the prosecution from seeking the death penalty against their client.
Mark Bowling's case has generated intense media coverage over the past year. Authorities charge that he plotted with Vincent, who according to search warrants confessed to shooting Bowling's wife.
Lurid stories involving strippers at Mark Bowling's business, Bowling Funeral Home & Crematory, surfaced after his arrest. One escort, Ashley Brown, testified to a grand jury that Mark Bowling asked her to kill his wife two weeks before the shooting.
Other reported evidence so far include a $2 million business debt combined with Julie Bowling's $1 million life insurance policy bought a month before her death, a deactivated security system at the family home and an alleged confession from Vincent that implicated Mark Bowling.
The funeral home business and the River Glenn residence have been sold to pay off creditors. But a civil suit remains pending between Mark Bowling and Julie Bowling's sister, Debbie Bunn, the executrix of Julie's estate.
