NEW ORLEANS — Prosecutors will be allowed to use DNA and fingerprint evidence in the second-degree murder trial against three of the four juveniles in the fatal carjacking of Linda Frickey, according to a ruling issued Wednesday by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal.
The decision reverses trial Judge Kimya Holmes’ ruling to block the forensic evidence because it was provided so close to trial.
“A review of the record reveals that the district attorney timely disclosed to the defendants all of the information…it itself had received on the same day the district attorney received it,” the three-judge appellate panel wrote.
The trial against three of the four juveniles is scheduled to start Monday with jury selection. A fourth defendant is being excluded after she was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.
In the same ruling, the Fourth Circuit denied a joint motion by prosecutors and defense attorneys to postpone the trial, agreeing that Holmes did not abuse her discretion in her ruling to go forward with the trial as scheduled.
Frickey was carjacked in Mid-City in 2022 and died after her arm got caught in a seatbelt and it was severed as the car pulled off.
Frickey's relatives have been at all of the hearings for over a year and have pledged to be there for any trial or hearing involving the defendants and the case.
Four teenagers - John Honore, 18; Briniyah Baker, 16; Mar’Qel Curtis, 16; and Lenyra Theophile - are facing charges as adults. Theophile will not be part of the initial trial after having been found incompetent. She will be re-evaluated in two months.