Letecia Stauch ordered to another court date after sanity evaluation

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - The woman accused of killing her young stepson was back in court Thursday for a mental evaluation hearing.

Letecia Stauch will now be back in court on September 15th to set up the new evaluation.

Our crew in the courtroom heard the judge use the word “sane” in reference to the evaluation but the findings are restricted.

The defense is asking for another sanity evaluation and wants to find their own expert to do a test.

The case against Letecia Stauch, 39, has been stalled for months while the court waited for sanity evaluation to be completed. Stauch changed her plea from not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity in February, a few short months after a judge ruled there was sufficient evidence against her to move the case to trial. Any insanity plea requires the state to conduct a mental health evaluation, and the case cannot move forward until one is completed.

In late July, the judge said if the evaluation wasn’t finished in another four weeks, a show cause hearing could be held, requiring someone with the state mental health facility to explain why the evaluation has been delayed.

11 News obtained court documents Aug. 9 showing that the court received the sanity report at the beginning of the month and had scheduled a conference for Aug. 25. Stauch has been ordered to appear in person.

Stauch is accused of murdering 11-year-old Gannon Stauch in January 2020 and then trying to pass it off as a runaway case. His remains were found in a suitcase under a highway in Florida two months after his disappearance. He had been brutally harmed before his death, according to investigators.

Letecia Stauch was arrested in South Carolina five weeks to the day after Gannon was reported missing, and despite a couple of attempts by her lawyers to allow her to bond out, has remained in the El Paso County jail since she was extradited back to Colorado on March 5, 2020.