A district court judge ordered Letecia Stauch to undergo evaluation at the state mental hospital. Stauch is accused in the murder of her stepson Gannon Stauch.

After defense attorneys in November indicated they would be arguing an “impaired mental condition” defense and asked for a mental evaluation for Stauch, 4th Judicial District Judge Gregory Werner ordered, Thursday afternoon, that mental evaluation be conducted at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.

Werner said he issued that order despite a significant backlog in mental evaluation requests, citing a letter he received in mid-November on an unrelated case describing a 352-person backlog. He said he expected that waitlist to be longer now, and that Stauch’s case would likely fall near the bottom.

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Defense attorneys expect to present evidence related to the women’s mental condition after the alleged crimes, attorney Josh Tolini said in November. That mental condition, he said on Thursday, was caused by “acute stress,” and he indicated it wasn’t an ongoing issue.

Stauch appeared in court via Webex on Thursday, after refusing to come to the courthouse because she said she wasn’t being given the medications she needed. She did not specify the medications or why she needs them.

“I have been refused my meds the last five days,” Stauch said during the hearing. “It is not safe to be in the courtroom when I cannot control myself.”

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Werner said that regardless, Stauch needed to be in court, and said that next time she refuses to come in, he’ll order an extraction team to bring her over. He noted that while at first, those extraction teams, made up of El Paso County Sheriff’s Office deputies, try to negotiate with uncooperative defendants, but will resort to force if needed.

Stauch’s case is scheduled to go to trial March 28, and is expected to last about six weeks. Werner moved her upcoming motions hearing, set for Jan. 6, back to Jan. 13, but said that if Stauch’s arrival at the state mental hospital was too close to the second date, he would vacate it.

Investigators believe Stauch killed Gannon sometime after 2 p.m. on Jan. 27, 2020. His body was discovered less than two months later by the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office in Florida, on March 18. Santa Rosa County is on the Florida Panhandle, east of Pensacola.

Prosecutors in September presented evidence linking Stauch to the murder, including blood linked to Gannon that was found on Stauch’s shoe, tracking data showing she had traveled to an area near where Gannon’s body was found, and her DNA, which was found on a gun tied to the killing.

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Investigators determined that Gannon was shot in the head and stabbed in the chest and back. A weapons expert determined bullets found in Gannon’s head and his pillowcase matched the type of ammunition used in a gun found on the nightstand in Stauch’s bedroom. The gun had Stauch’s DNA on it, but also the DNA of at least two other people, an investigator testified.

Defense attorneys sought to create doubt that Stauch committed the murder by suggesting that someone else could have entered the home around the time Gannon died, and sought to tie home security data with the unknown DNA on the gun investigators found.

But FBI agent Andrew Cohen testified in September that Stauch was the only person investigators believe could have committed the murder.

“I haven’t seen any evidence of anyone else coming into the house,” Cohen said.

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