East Cobb Murder Trial Delayed Again

The previously delayed trial of a Gwinnett County man charged with murdering a woman in her East Cobb home 17 years ago has been delayed yet again. 

On Monday a visiting judge in Cobb Superior Court issued a 90-day continuance for new attorneys representing Waseem Daker, who is accused of strangling Karmen Smith and repeatedly stabbing her young son in October 1995. 

The delay was granted because Daker's newest attorneys, the father-son team of Michael and Jason Treadaway, were appointed less than two weeks ago, according to a report in The Marietta Daily Journal. 

The story said prosecutors fought against the delay, accusing Daker of "whipsawing this by asking for a speedy trial, and then doing things to slow it down.”

Daker, now 34, had been put under oath on Monday, when the trial was set to have begun. The new trial date has been set for June 4. 

Daker, who was arrested in January 2010, has fired a court-appointed attorney and attempted to represent himself. 

He is facing multiple charges of felony murder, burglary, false imprisonment and aggravated assault in the killing of Smith, who was found strangled in her basement apartment on Old Hunters Trace on Oct. 23, 1995.

Her son, Nicholas, five years old at the time and a student at Timber Ridge Elementary School, had been stabbed 16 times but survived and may be testifiying, according to the MDJ report.

Smith and her son lived in a home owned by Loretta Blatz, who was being stalked by Daker. In 1996 he was convicted of stalking Blatz, serving most of a 10-year sentence upon being released from prison in October 2005.

Although Daker was suspected of killing Smith and stabbing her son from the start, the case went cold for a decade and a half, until existing DNA evidence turned up a match.