Garage murder won’t be capital case

A woman accused of killing her ex-boyfriend won’t face the death penalty, and she most likely will not see a trial until next spring.

Kathryn Sinkevitch was in court Monday for a pre-trial hearing on the first-degree murder case. She is accused of shooting to death Michael Agerter, 31, in the garage of his rental home in Rancho El Dorado on Dec. 16.

Sinkevitch has a 4-month-old child with the victim.

Prosecutor Sean Coll said though capital punishment is off the table as the deadline has passed, the Pinal County Attorney’s Office is not making a plea offer.

At the time of Agerter’s murder, the son Sinkevitch had with Agerter was only about a month old. The case involved mutual accusations of domestic abuse and Agerter’s attempt to claim custody of his son.

Sinkevitch, whose residence was in Tempe, is accused of driving to Agerter’s home in Maricopa, waiting for him to arrive and shooting him before driving away. Footage of a hooded suspect and a minivan was captured by a surveillance camera Agerter had installed at his house.

The date of trial is tentative. Timing of the case was aimed at a January 2018, but Public Defender James Mannato said another high-profile murder case would make that difficult.

Mannato is also defending Jose Valenzuela, accused of murdering Mike and Tina Careccia of Maricopa. That trial is set to start Jan. 23.

“That will be a very lengthy trial due to being a capital trial,” Mannato said. “I don’t want to place this in front of Mr. Valenzuela’s because I’m not going to have a whole lot of time to dedicate to Ms. Sinkevith’s case.”

Coll said he was unaware of Mannato’s time conflict and asked for another status hearing to set a “realistic date” for Sinkevitch’s trial. He was amenable to pushing back the date into March or April.

But Coll did put up a light protest to Mannato’s request for another extension to challenge the grand jury proceedings.

“This has been extended once already,” Coll said. “If there is an extension, it should be brief and come with a deadline.”

He said a lot of evidence, including “a couple hundred photographs” of the crime scene, was not available at the time of the grand jury because the prosecutor’s did not have it yet.

“Discovery is ever ongoing, ever evolving,” Coll said.

Superior Court Judge Kevin White allowed Mannato the extension, setting that date for April 14. Mannato was previously successful in getting the first grand-jury indictment of Valenzuela tossed.