Sentencing Rescheduled in Tiede Case

CARTHAGE — The judge presiding over Bernie Tiede’s new punishment trial has moved it to January at the request of the special prosecutor and the convicted murderer’s lawyer. That’s according to KETK and the Longview News-Journal. Officials in the office of Panola County District Clerk Debra Johnson confirmed Thursday that visiting Judge Diane DeVasto also moved a hearing to settle pretrial issues to Dec. 1. That’s about six weeks before Tiede is scheduled to be resentenced for the 1996 fatal shooting of 81-year-old Carthage widow Marjorie Nugent. That trial is scheduled Jan. 11 in the 123rd District Court in Carthage.

Tiede, 56, was freed a year ago from a life sentence he received after his murder conviction in 1999. New evidence of his mental state, arising from childhood sexual assault trauma, prompted DeVasto to order a new punishment hearing. The murder conviction was not altered, and Tiede faces up to life in prison minus time already served.

The judge initially set Tiede’s new punishment trial for Monday, but it was complicated by pretrial motions, including what to do with a pending theft charge related to the murder. Panola County District Attorney Danny Buck Davidson created a second delay in a pretrial hearing set for March 3 when he asked to be removed from the case because he learned he could be called as a witness in the theft case. Two members of the Criminal Prosecutions Division of the Texas Attorney General’s Office subsequently took over in Tiede’s punishment hearing.