Trial in killing of UA professor pushed to next year

The trial for the man accused in the on-campus killing of a University of Arizona professor in October has been moved to 2024, a Pima County Superior Court judge ruled on Thursday.

During Thursday’s hearing, Judge Howard Fell ordered that Murad Dervish’s, 46, Sept. 19 trial date be vacated and moved to next year. The new trial date stems from a motion to continue Dervish’s attorney, Christopher Lynch, filed on Tuesday.

In the motion, Lynch requested that the trial be continued to next May because it would be “highly unlikely” that the doctor’s report from Dervish’s guilty except insane evaluation would be ready by the original trial date.

Back in July, Fell ordered that Dr. James Sullivan conduct a guilty except insane evaluation of Dervish on Aug. 31 at the Pima County jail.

Lynch’s motion also said that the University of Arizona provided both parties with over 9,000 documents and records and it would be unlikely that they would have “sufficient opportunity to meaningfully review the documents prior to the current trial date.”

In addition to the trial date, Dervish’s pre-trial conference was also moved to next year, where it will be the setting for the defense’s re-urging of their previously filed motion to have the trial from Tucson, court records say.

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Lynch had originally filed a motion for change of venue in December, but Fell denied it because “the defendant failed to show the publicity created a presumption of prejudice or actual prejudice.”

Dervish faces a first degree murder charge after Tucson police say he shot and killed Thomas Meixner, the head of the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, inside the John W. Harshbarger building on Oct. 5, 2022.

Dervish, who was previously a graduate student in the department, had ongoing issues with faculty members following a bad grade he received in one of his classes, police records show. Due to the issues, he was dismissed from the program.

Dervish blamed the department members for his expulsion, which led him to harass and send threatening emails and text messages to multiple professors, including Meixner, police records show. At the time of the shooting, Dervish was barred from being on campus.