The four defendants who pleaded not guilty in the kidnapping and murder of Tushar Atre, a tech entrepreneur who lived in Pleasure Point. (Contributed)
SANTA CRUZ — The start of a murder trial took a significant step backward Tuesday when a judge ruled that its four co-defendants, who were being tried together, will each have their own trial.
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Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Siegel was persuaded by arguments that the four men charged with kidnapping and murdering 50-year-old tech and cannabis entrepreneur Tushar Atre on his Soquel San Jose Road property in October 2019, would be best served with their own set of jurors.
The ruling came even as the trials of the four co-defendants had technically begun, with pre-trial motions regarding procedural rules and juror panel interviews scheduled to begin this week.
Tushar Atre
According to attorneys, defendant Stephen Nicolas Lindsay, 26, is expected be the first to head to trial in December. Fellow defendants Joshua Camps, 28, and brothers Kurtis and Kaleb Charters, 26 and 23, respectively, will individually follow.
Attorneys have argued in court filings that a fair trial was not possible because several of the defendants implicated each other during post-arrest interviews with police detectives, and that transcript redactions would be difficult to untangle for each.
“The defendant’s sole grounds for requesting severance is the use of statements by the co-defendants,” Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Michael McKinney wrote in response to one severance request. “However, the statements can be adequately redacted or modified with neutral pronouns to avoid directly implicating the defendant.”
The next hearing in the case is scheduled at 8:15 a.m., Dec. 10.