GUILTY KY - Jonathan Krueger, 22, UK student, shot to death, Lexington, 17 April 2015 *arrests*

Lexington police have made a second arrest arrest in the death of Jonathan Krueger, a junior at the University of Kentucky who was shot while walking home early Friday.

Krueger, 22, of Perrysburg, Ohio was killed about 2 a.m. during a robbery at Transylvania Park and East Maxwell Street. He died from a gunshot wound to the chest, according to the Fayette County Coroner. Police arrested Efrain Diaz, 20, Friday evening and charged him with murder and robbery. Police also arrested Justin D. Smith, 18, who has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting.

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Lexington police have arrested a third person, a male juvenile, in connection with last week's fatal shooting of a University of Kentucky student. The 17-year-old, whose name was not released, was charged Monday with murder, robbery and tampering with physical evidence in connection with the shooting of Jonathan Krueger...

Attorneys entered not guilty pleas Monday on behalf of the two men already charged with murder.

Thomas O'Mara, who lives near the intersection of Transylvania Park and East Maxwell Street, said Friday that he heard two or three gunshots followed by a pause and then four or five more.

Police have said that Krueger and another person were walking along East Maxwell when the crime occurred. Krueger was walking home. O'Mara, who helped the second man, Krueger's fraternity brother, said the victim reported being beaten and robbed of his watch and wallet before he ran from the assailants.

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Prosecutors say they are ready to set a trial date for the three people charged in the fatal shooting of a University of Kentucky student killed during a robbery in April.

During a hearing Friday in Fayette Circuit Court, attorneys said lab results for ballistic tests are in and DNA results will be available by the end of the month....

Attorneys think the case will go to trial at the end of 2016. A bond hearing is scheduled for Jan. 15.

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Nearly a year after University of Kentucky student Jonathan Krueger was shot and killed, the three young men charged with murder in his death want new bonds set to get out of jail before trial.

Attorneys for Roman Gonzalez, 18, Justin Delone Smith, 19 and Efrain Diaz, 21 will argue before a judge Friday for “reasonable” bonds. The trio have been in jail since April.

Diaz and Smith don’t have bonds set on their murder charges. Gonzalez, who was a juvenile at the time of the shooting, had bond set at $1 million in July when the prosecution asked for at least $250,000 because of the crime’s violence.

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Circuit court judge Ernesto Scorsone set a trial date for the three individuals charged with the April 2015 shooting death of Kentucky Kernel photo editor and UK student Jonathan Krueger.

The trial is set to begin March 6, 2017, and will run for about four weeks. A status hearing is scheduled for June 3.

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A Fayette County judge has suppressed interrogation videos of two defendants charged in the death of University of Kentucky student Jonathan Krueger because Lexington detectives violated the teens’ rights during the investigation.

The police videos featuring interviews with Roman Gonzalez and Justin Delone Smith will not be admitted when their cases go to trial March 6.

Judge Ernesto Scorsone said the then-teens’ Fifth Amendment rights were violated, according to court documents.

“The court finds that the detectives violated Gonazalez’s Fifth Amendment due process rights by continuing to interview him when he did not knowingly and voluntarily waive, expressly or impliedly, his right to remain silent and his right to counsel,” Scorsone said in his Oct. 26 ruling.

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Attorneys for Efrain Diaz and Roman Gonzalez filed motions for separate trials because they want to introduce a statement from a third suspect, Justin Smith, to help their case.

A judge ruled on Friday that Diaz and Gonalez will not be tried separately.

The next hearing is scheduled for March 31. The trial is scheduled to start in October.

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Some legal maneuvering Friday as the three men accused in a high-profile murder case of a UK student were back in court for a hearing as a judge works to decide what evidence will be allowed at trial.

The attorneys went through the transcript of a police interrogation with the judge. It was a long process that took hours but an important step to ensure a fair trial.

Friday’s hearing got through about 40 of the 80 pages of transcript. Everyone will reconvene Monday afternoon to go through the rest.

The defense also plans to file another motion regarding different evidence.

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Two men charged with the murder and robbery of University of Kentucky student Jonathan Krueger want to avoid the death penalty by arguing that their young brains weren’t fully developed during the April 2015 shooting on East Maxwell Street near campus.

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Laurence Steinberg, professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, testified Monday that research since 2005 has shown that human brains don’t fully mature until the mid-20s. Steinberg helped draft an American Psychological Association brief for the case in which the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18.

“In the last 10 years or so, we have seen that a lot of the maturation that takes place between the ages 10 and 18 is actually ongoing into the early 20s and up until, we think, the mid-20s,” Steinberg said. “That is now well established in the scientific literature.”

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Fayette Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone made no decision after the hourlong hearing. Scorsone said he would like to see the research since 2005 in regard to brain development.

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The attorney for Efrain Diaz said that the death penalty has been taken off the table for his client in the shooting death of a UK student.

Efrain Diaz, Justin Smith and Roman Gonzalez Jr. are charged with robbing and killing UK student Jonathan Krueger back in April of 2015.

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It started with a judge taking the death penalty off the table for two of the three defendants because they were under 21 at the time of the crime.

Prosecutors are challenging the ruling.

The trial will not be re-scheduled until the Kentucky Supreme Court makes a ruling.

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During Friday's hearing, attorneys discussed an issue with evidence. Diaz's attorney says he filed a motion to exclude evidence of firearms and accessories that are unrelated to the crime. He says the Commonwealth and attorneys for Gonzalez opposed that. He wants a chance to respond to the briefs filed by Gonzalez's attorney because he says, it is creating antagonistic defenses.

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Two men charged with the 2015 murder of University of Kentucky student Jonathan Krueger were ruled mentally competent in an evaluation ordered by a judge as the two fight the possibility that they may face the death penalty.

Efrain Diaz, 23, and Justin Smith, 21, had medical, psychological, psychiatric and medical evaluations done on them last fall at the Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center in LaGrange.

Diaz did not want the evaluation, according to at least one set of court documents. Smith wanted his own representative present during the review at the state psychiatric center. Both were expected to have separate evaluations by experts affiliated with defense teams.

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