photo by: Sara Shepherd

Steven A. Drake III appears in Douglas County District Court during a hearing on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019.

The 2017 case of a Lawrence man set to stand trial for murder has again been delayed.

Steven A. Drake III, 24, was scheduled to stand trial for first-degree murder beginning Monday, but that will no longer happen, a court assistant said on Friday. The court assistant did not provide a reason to the Journal-World for the delay.

The delay comes a day after Drake rejected a plea agreement in the case by refusing to show up to his scheduled plea hearing. At the hearing, Judge Kay Huff told KiAnn Caprice Spradlin, Drake’s attorney, that the agreement rejection meant the trial would continue regardless of whether Drake refuses to appear in court again.

But it’s now unclear when that may be. A new trial date has not yet been determined. A status conference for the case is scheduled for June 15, according to court documents.

Drake’s trial had been delayed several times before. In 2019, the case had been delayed as Drake looked to hire a private attorney after his original attorney, Angela Keck, withdrew because of a conflict of interest. Later that year, Huff gave Drake a “hard deadline” to find an attorney as the trial was then scheduled to begin in May 2020. But it would be delayed again because of the coronavirus pandemic, along with dozens of Douglas County trials that were rescheduled for this spring and summer.

Drake could have brought the case to a close on Thursday through the plea agreement, which would have seen him plead no contest to three charges for the the killing of 26-year-old Bryce S. Holladay in 2017.

He is accused of shooting Holladay to death on Sept. 19, 2017, in the doorway of Drake’s home in the 2000 block of West 27th Terrace. As the Journal-World previously reported, Drake told a 911 dispatcher that he had just shot Holladay in the face because he wouldn’t get out of his house.

According to the proposed plea agreement provided to the Journal-World on Friday, Drake was expected to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter and two charges of aggravated battery.

The agreement shows the prosecutors and defense would have asked the court to sentence Drake to a total of 143 months in prison, which is just under 12 years. But by rejecting the agreement, Drake will continue to face the first-degree murder charge, which could result in a “Hard 50” sentence of life in prison without the possibility for parole for 50 years if he is convicted, the Journal-World previously reported.

Drake has already been sentenced in another case. In June 2019, Drake pleaded no contest to attempted aggravated battery, a lower-severity felony than the aggravated battery charge he was facing, the Journal-World previously reported. Drake was accused of beating a 16-year-old boy in a fight, causing a serious head injury, on July 8, 2017. Huff sentenced Drake to 570 days in prison for the conviction.

Drake is also facing a vehicular manslaughter charge, which is a misdemeanor, in connection with a deadly crash on Nov. 6, 2016, just north of Clinton Lake. Taylor B. Lister, 24, of Lecompton, was killed in the crash. That case is set to go to trial in August, according to court records.