The State of New Hampshire has filed a motion to extend the indictment date for 23-year-old Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, the man charged with killing seven motorcycle riders in a crash earlier this summer.
On Wednesday, August 7, Coos County Superior Court released documents pertaining to the State's motion to extend time limits for discovery and the State's assent to motion to extend time to seek indictment in this case.
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According to the first document, the State received notice on July 22 that it had received an extended time frame to provide all discovery it could by July 29 and any additional discovery by August 12. The order filed on Wednesday requests that this timeline be extended even further to allow for more discovery.
In its argument, the State said this is a "complex case" that requires more time, since the investigation is "large in scope" and "involves multiples branches of several law enforcement agencies".
The State added it has already produced hundreds of pages of reports, pictures, recordings, and other evidence for the defense; but it said the total completion of discovery (including seven individual autopsy reports of the victims and complete forensic analysis of the crime scene by N.H. State Police) would not be finished by the Court's deadline of August 12.
The second document released Wednesday pertains to the State's assent to motion to extend the indictment date for Zhukovskyy.
In this argument, the State notes that though deadline for an indictment to be returned in the defendant's case is September 23, the Coos grand jury does not sit in September and will not sit again until October 18. As a result, the State is asking that since discovery is still ongoing, indictment for Zhukovskyy be pushed back to October 19.
In this filing, the State said the 90-day deadline extension will not result in any "meaningful prejudice" and that it will "allow the interests of justice to be served".
The State also noted that Zhukovskyy's lawyer, Attorney Jay Q. Duguay, was contacted, and he has assented to the request.
These motions are the latest development in the case, stemming from a June 21 crash between a group of motorcycle riders and Zhukovskyy, who was driving a pick-up truck with a trailer. Zhukovskyy was charged with seven negligent homicides as a result of the deadly Route 2 crash, which also injured three other motorcycle riders.
Zhukovskyy has pleaded not guilty to these charges.
On Saturday, August 3, new reports emerged that Zhukovskyy had been under the influence of drugs at the time of the crash and had reached for a beverage just before the collision.
According to the Associated Press, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said the drug that Zhukovskyy tested positive for was "unspecified", but it made him "incapable of driving safely" when his truck crossed the center yellow line and hit the motorcyclists in Randolph.
The entire court documents from Wednesday read as follows:
STATE'S MOTION TO EXTEND TIME LIMITS FOR DISCOVERY:
STATE'S ASSENTED TO MOTION TO EXTEND TIME TO SEEK INDICTMENT:
