RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. — The criminal trial of Mercedes Carrera and her husband on multiple child sexual abuse charges, which had last been scheduled to begin on July 17, has been postponed again.
At a hearing Tuesday, Judge Katrina West reset the pretrial date to August 8.
A pretrial hearing for the case was in July 2022, with an Oct. 3, 2022 date agreed upon for the beginning of the jury trial. Since then, however, the trial date has been repeatedly vacated and postponed.
Carrera and her husband, Jason Whitney, were arrested after a police raid of their Rancho Cucamonga home on Feb. 1, 2019.
By the new pretrial date, they will have been in the county jail awaiting trial for four and half years, held initially without bail and later, after they had liquidated their assets and had no source of income due to their incarceration, with bail set at $2 million for each.
Earlier this month, two different YouTube channels published audio recordings purporting to be recent interviews with Carrera taped via phone from the West Valley Corrections Center.
During these interviews, Carrera expresses frustration with the conditions of her imprisonment and the handling of her case by the arresting officers, and questions some of the decisions made by her own legal counsel, who was appointed for her by the state.
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