Judge Resets Ava Musgrove Murder Trial 45 Days After New State Offer and Phone Extraction

A judge on the Jefferson County criminal docket removed the murder trial of Ava Musgrove (cause no. 25 DCCR0048) from the trial docket and reset the matter for 45 days to allow defense counsel to review newly produced materials and a state offer. The court told counsel that if a resolution is not reached on the new date, the case will return to the trial docket and trial rights will be waived.

The judge said the reset will give lawyers time to complete “a voluminous amount of materials” from a cell‑phone extraction and to consider the state’s newly offered resolution. Defense counsel told the court: “we just recently received an offer or a new offer from the state. There is a cell phone extraction that was performed a couple of months ago. It is a voluminous amount of materials. We're still reviewing that.” The judge replied that he would “take it off the trial docket” and give “45 days for a review,” adding that any agreement must be finalized on that day or the case will “go back on the trial docket and it'll be waived for trial.”

The reset was announced on the record; the judge directed the parties to be prepared on the new date. The defendant, Ava Musgrove, was present and acknowledged the court. The transcript does not record further details of the state’s offer or the contents of the extraction.

The court’s action is a scheduling reset to allow counsel time to review evidence and negotiate; it is not a disposition of the underlying charge. If no agreement is reached at the next setting, the case will proceed to trial unless counsel takes a different procedural step on the reset date.