The re-trial was postponed until October for a man previously convicted of killing a teenager with metro Atlanta ties, The Baltimore Sun reported Tuesday.
In March, Michael Maurice Johnson was convicted of second-degree murder for the death of 16-year-old Phylicia Barnes, whose body was found floating in a Maryland river in April 2011. But a judge later reversed the verdict because prosecutors failed to provide defense attorneys with information about a key witness, the Sun reported.
Both prosecutors and defense attorneys asked for additional time before the re-trial, the newspaper reported.
Barnes, from Monroe, N.C., outside of Charlotte, was visiting her half-sister in northwest Baltimore when she disappeared in December 2010. Barnes' father, Russell Barnes of Riverdale, spent time in Baltimore after his daughter disappeared, and her mother, Janice Sallis, also went to Baltimore but then moved back to Atlanta in January 2011 at her family's urging.
Johnson had dated Barnes' elder sister, Deena, for years, and prosecutors have alleged that he had grown inappropriately close to the teen in the months preceding her death, The Sun previously reported.
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