Almost a year after Marvin Dominguez was arrested and charged with murdering his girlfriend and then burying her body in the backyard of their St. Croix home, the New Jersey native is still behind bars awaiting trial.
Dominguez, 25, is accused of strangling Patricia Ann Haumacher, 30, in October 1999. He turned himself in to police a month later after telling acquaintances that Haumacher had left the island.
After several postponements of his trial, Dominguez remains in custody, mainly becaue evidence sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab in Washington, D.C., hasn’t been returned, said the V.I. government’s prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Darryl Donohue.
Donohue said the delay in starting the trial, particularly a homicide case involving crucial evidence, is not unusual.
"There are certain types of evidential analysis that we cannot do here. We have to send it off island," he said, adding that since the territory is relatively small, waits can be long. "As a consequence we have to stand in line."
Dominguez’s court-appointed attorney, Richard Daley, recently filed a motion for a speedy trial but was denied. A pre-trial conference, where the judge will be briefed on whether the case will go to trial or plea-bargained, is the next step. When that will happen is unclear.
The judge handling the case, Alphonso Andrews, wasn’t renominated to the bench, and that has hindered the process as well.
"Basically, it’s continued without a date," Daley said.
There is a federal statute that calls for a defendant to get a trial within 90 days of being arrested. The statute, however, doesn’t apply in the territory. According to Donohue, the territory follows the speedy trial mandates in the Constitution, which allows a judge leeway to decide if a defendant has been harmed by a delay.
Friends of Haumacher are concerned that Dominguez still hasn’t been to trial. One of them, Catherine Pugliese, is a co-owner of the restaurant where the couple worked.
"I still think it should be brought to light," she said. "Something should be said on behalf of her friends and family and all the victims of domestic violence. We haven’t forgotten Annie. A lot of people still care."
Although Dominguez turned himself in for the crime, he has pleaded not guilty.
Haumacher’s family in New Jersey reported her missing on Nov. 9, 1999, after not hearing from her for more than a month. Four days later, V.I. police interviewed Dominguez, who told investigators she was having family problems and had left the island. Acquaintances of Dominguez and Haumacher said she was last seen around Oct. 8, 1999.
Dominguez turned himself in on Nov. 29, soon after authorities queried him about Haumacher’s whereabouts. The next day officials exhumed Haumacher’s body, bound and gagged inside a duffel bag, from a shallow grave in the yard of the house the two had shared in Estate Two Brothers. An autopsy concluded that the victim was killed by manual strangulation and had been dead for one to two months.
