Trial was postponed Thursday in Christian Circuit Court for Karen Brafman, who is charged with attempted murder and arson for allegedly setting a mobile home on fire with six people inside on Princeton Road in May of 2018.
A witness for the commonwealth was unable to appear for the trial that had been set to begin Thursday morning. Attorney James Chamberlain asked for Brafman to be released from jail on her own recognizance on an ankle monitor, as she is unable to make her current $25,000 bond and trial has been delayed multiple times through no fault of her own.
Assistant Attorney General Amy Burke argued reducing the bond more would unduly depreciate the nature of the crime. Judge John Atkins decided to take the motion under advisement, asking the commonwealth to get input from the victims and to provide a written response.
Burke asked Judge Atkins to allow Brafman’s testimony from her first trial to be admissible at the second trial—specifically statements about whether she remembered anything from the morning of the fire.
Judge Atkins ruled the testimony can be used, so long as any comments that indicated they happened during a previous trial be edited out.
Part of the reason the conviction from the first trial was thrown out by the Kentucky Supreme Court was due to lack of authentication of text messages used as evidence where Brafman is alleged to have used racial slurs toward the African-American man who lived in the trailer where the fire was set. Burke argued she can use logic and testimony from the victim to show Brafman was in fact the sender at the new trial.
Chamberlain noted nothing new has been revealed about the texts since the Supreme Court decision, so there’s no basis for allowing them now. Judge Atkins scheduled a separate hearing in June to hear arguments over the text messages.
Trial was rescheduled for July 11-13 of this year.
A 2019 jury found Brafman guilty of first-degree arson, second-degree arson and six counts of attempted murder and gave her a life sentence.
The Kentucky Supreme Court reversed the decision based on prosecutorial misconduct and the entry of the text messages as evidence.