A court date was set Wednesday for Anthony Sanchez, who is accused of raping and murdering OU dance student Jewell "Juli" Busken in 1996.

Sanchez's trial will begin at 9 a.m. on Oct. 17 at the Cleveland County Courthouse.

Sanchez, 26, is also being charged with kidnapping, forcible sodomy and rape.

During a two-day preliminary hearing last month, it was found there was enough evidence to try Sanchez.

Busken was kidnapped Dec. 20, 1996, from the parking lot of her apartment building and taken to Lake Stanley Draper in Oklahoma City, according to police reports.

There, Busken was bound, raped, sodomized and shot in the back of the head with a .22 caliber handgun.

During the hearing, which lasted about 45 minutes, there was a debate about setting a trial date and the paperwork that had come into the district attorney's office.

Prosecutor Rick Sitzman told Judge Tom A. Lucas that a lack of availability of court time meant a more realistic docket would be January 2006.

"My main concern is due to scheduling of the dockets, due to staffing and and the number of homicides in Cleveland County," Sitzman said. "There are one to two homicides set for every docket through the end of 2005."

Sitzmann said the district attorney's office currently has six homicides on the docket, two of which are being classified as capital murders. He said that two to three weeks before the preliminary hearing, he received hundreds of documents, including police reports from the Oklahoma City Police Department.

Defense attorney Silas Lyman II said the only information available for the public is the scheduling of the motions leading up to the trial date.

"Because there is a gag order on the details of the case, I am unable to give information concerning specifics of the case," Lyman said.

Also, there was concern about possibly moving Sanchez out of the Cleveland County Detention Center.

Sitzman said that due to the concern of overcrowding in the detention center, there is a possibility of authorities moving Sanchez to the Department of Corrections in Lexington until his trial date.

At the time of Busken's murder, Sanchez was 18 years old and lived about a mile from Busken's apartment, according to court documents. In July 2004, a national database matched Sanchez's DNA to the DNA found on Busken's body.

Sanchez was serving time in the Cleveland County Detention Center for second-degree burglary when he was charged in the Busken case.

If convicted on all charges, Sanchez could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to a court affidavit.
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