All,

I am cautiously very optimistic that Octavian will finally get his long-awaited evidentiary hearing. It's been two long years, but things have been happening that I haven't shared yet. The court required that the State respond to two of Octavian's grounds in his post-conviction relief motion. The State finally responded on 9/6/18 and although they "denied the allegations", they cite "the record does not conclusively demonstrate that the Defendant is not entitled to relief on Grounds three and four; therefore the State requests that the Court grant an evidentiary hearing on the Defendant's motion."

WOW. All I can say is wow. Now we wait for the Court to respond to see if they agree to grant an evidentiary hearing. We believe with high certainty that they will.

THANK YOU to everyone who has donated money to this campaign.

Delphine and I had a conference call with Richard Kurtiz to discuss next steps. Tomorrow, we are dropping off a $5,000 check (retainer for the evidentiary hearing) and will be signing an engagement letter with Mr. Kuritz. The money YOU contributed is what is making this possible. I can't thank everyone enough. It is so critical that Octavian is properly represented for this hearing.

Mr. Kuritz did tell us that he thought the hearing would probably not take place until early January. He will need a little time to dig through all of the evidence and prepare properly and we are in the holiday season so it will be a bit difficult to get a trial date in November/December.

IF we do well in the evidentiary hearing (and I believe we will), the next step will be a new trial. We will be stepping up funding efforts again over the next month or two once we have a better idea of what is going to happen. A new trial will be costly, but we can't let him be defended by a public defender again.

I will keep you updated once we hear back from the Court.

Say prayers for Octavian. Thank you all so much for making it possible to pay for the evidentiary hearing.