McLennan County prosecutors issued 97 witness subpoenas this week in preparation for the Matt Baker murder trial, while Baker has gained a new lawyer who wants to know what the state promised Baker’s alleged girlfriend to get her to testify against him.

Baker’s trial is set to begin Jan. 11 in Waco’s 19th State District Court. Judge Ralph Strother has scheduled a pretrial hearing for Wednesday to consider new motions filed last week by Kerrville attorney Harold Danford and other matters that need addressing before trial.

Baker, 38, a former Central Texas Baptist minister and chaplain at the Waco Center for Youth, is charged with murder in the April 2006 death of his wife, Kari, the 31-year-old mother of his two daughters.

Danford, 46, informed the court in a motion filed last week that he is joining his former Kerrville law partner, Guy James Gray, in representing Baker for free. Like Gray, Danford is a former prosecutor, working as an assistant district attorney in Kerrville for four years before moving to Austin and working two years as director of the Department of Public Safety’s DWI/administrative-license-review section.

He moved back to Kerrville and has been practicing criminal defense law ever since.

Baker remains free on bond and is living with his daughters in Kerrville. Prosecutors have charged him with slipping Kari Baker sleeping pills and then smothering her with a pillow after she passed out on the combination of pills and alcohol.

Baker, who lost a substitute teaching job in Kerrville after his arrest, is selling goods on the Internet. He has denied that he killed his wife and disputes allegations that he was having an affair with Vanessa Bulls, a member of Crossroads Baptist Church near Lorena while Baker served as pastor there.

“From what I have seen, they don’t have much of a case,” Danford said. “But it certainly will be interesting.”

Gray, the former district attorney in Jasper before moving to Kerrville, said he asked Danford to help him try the case.

Baker has claimed in multiple media interviews that his wife was despondent over the death of a daughter seven years before and took her own life with sleeping pills while their two daughters were asleep down the hall and he was out renting a movie and buying more premixed alcoholic drinks.

Most of the pretrial motions filed last week by Danford are routine. However, in one, Baker is asking the judge to order prosecutors to reveal the details of any agreements they entered into to obtain the testimonies of witnesses, especially Bulls, Baker’s alleged former girlfriend.

Judge Matt Johnson granted Bulls testimonial immunity before her March 25 grand jury appearance, meaning nothing she said during her testimony could be used against her. Baker’s lawyers have been unsuccessful thus far in gaining access to a transcript of her grand jury testimony, after which Baker was indicted.

Witnesses have told authorities that Kari Baker suspected that Baker was having an affair and was afraid that he would try to kill her after she found a powdery substance in a bottle in his briefcase. Other witnesses have said they spotted Baker and Bulls looking at engagement rings at the mall in Waco just days after his wife’s death.

Baker also gave Bulls his wife’s cell phone, and they racked up hundreds of hours of calls on the phone not long after Kari died.

Baker told the Tribune-Herald in December 2007 that it was “stupid” for him to give the phone to Bulls but said they were just good friends from church. He also said he and Bulls were looking for earrings for his girls at the store.

“It really was stupid for me to do that,” Baker said of the cell phone. “But she was a friend, and she was one of the few people at that point in time who didn’t accuse and who didn’t look at me strange, if that makes sense.”

Baker’s lawyers are also asking the judge to quash the indictment against him because they claim it does not give them sufficient notice about how the state is alleging that Kari Baker died.

They are also asking for a copy of the state’s witness list, which numbers 97 people, including Baker’s parents, Barbara and Oscar Baker, and Baker’s daughters, Kensie and Grace. It is unlikely that the state will call Baker’s family, courthouse officials have said. However, by subpoenaing them, prosecutors can keep them out of the courtroom and the jury’s view during Baker’s trial, they said.

In another motion, Danford asks the judge to approve an additional $1,500 in expenses for defense investigator Mart Hanna.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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