Ten days before it’s scheduled to go to trial, the case against a retired Navy doctor accused of fatally stabbing his wife in Anne Arundel County as their polyamorous relationship unraveled faces an uncertain future.

Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess has enlisted the help of the Maryland Attorney General to appeal being thrown off the case after the judge found she failed to disclose evidence suggesting the defendant’s innocence and “irreparably” tainted her role as a prosecutor by speaking to more than a dozen witnesses by herself.

The other prosecutor on the case, David Russell, is consulting an outside lawyer to determine what evidence to provide the defense in light of what happened to Leitess.

And Monday, Anne Arundel County Police Detective Justin Downey, the case’s lead homicide investigator, invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself when asked whether he deleted records of his communication with Leitess about a neighbor who said the defendant once told him his wife previously pulled a knife on him.

Because Leitess was the lead attorney on this high-profile murder case, her deputies are scrambling to correct for her admitted mistake and to prepare for a jury as the case barrels towards trial beginning May 23.

Circuit Judge Mark W. Crooks rejected prosecutors’ request Monday to postpone the case while they appeal his decision to dismiss Leitess from the case and bar her from working on it.

“This is uncharted territory,” Crooks said. “I don’t know what an appellate court will do.”

While acknowledging Russell faced a daunting task of preparing for a fast-approaching trial, Crooks determined that the reason prosecutors asked for a delay was a problem of their own making and that the defendant’s constitutional right to go to timely trial outweighed any inconvenience to the prosecution.

“Delay is heavily disfavored, and even more so when invoked by the government,” Crooks said. “Ms. Leitess’ disqualification does not impair the state’s ability to move forward with the case.”

It’s still possible a panel of judges on the Appellate Court of Maryland could order the case frozen as they consider the prosecution’s appeal, which hasn’t been filed yet.

But unless that happens soon, prosecutors have little time to prepare a murder case involving numerous witnesses and several experts.

Prosecutors allege Dr. James Houston lured his estranged wife Nancianne to their waterfront apartment in Edgewater Aug. 9 under the guise of completing tax documents, then stabbed her with a kitchen knife. Medics pronounced her dead at the gruesome scene. She was 47.

Badly wounded during the encounter, Houston, 58, was sent to Maryland Shock Trauma Center. But prosecutors think he used his medical knowledge to make it look like he was hurt in a knife fight without risking death.

His attorney says he was defending himself.

The couple had no record of violence, save a March 2023 incident when Nancianne alleged in an application for court protection that he threw a drink in her face.

But on April 1, when Leitess spoke with Houston’s neighbor and friend Steven Valladares to go over his testimony before trial, he told her that Houston said at a party that Nancianne once pulled a knife on him.

Instead of immediately disclosing that to Houston’s attorneys, Leitess ordered Downey to interview Valladares, which she could then disclose to the defense. She said she followed up with Downey several times.

Crooks ruled that Valladares’ statement could suggest Houston’s innocence, or at least bolster his self-defense claim, and should have been disclosed immediately. He threw Leitess off the case for failing to do that and for making herself a witness in the case by speaking with Valladares and about 15 others with nobody else present.

During testimony in court last week, Downey acknowledged Leitess ordered him to interview Valladares, but confessed “time got away from me.”

The detective said he couldn’t remember how many times Leitess followed up. He also testified that he was having problems with his department-issued phone and that, when he got a new one, his call logs and text messages didn’t transfer over.

Crooks and defense attorneys wanted to verify Leitess’ claims with Downey’s call logs. The judge ordered Downey to appear in court Monday so they could follow up.

When defense attorney John Robinson asked Downey whether he recalled telling the department’s technology unit to “wipe it,” Downey conferred with his attorney before he invoked his right against self incrimination.

The spectacle also discomforted Russell, the other prosecutor, because Leitess testified she told him about Valladares’s disclosure. Sworn to tell the truth, Russell disputed his boss’s assertion during a bench conference, Crooks said in court.

Crooks also said he believed Leitess violated his order barring her from working on the case because prosecutors shared case documents with the defense that she appeared to have accessed and altered since then.

After consulting confidentially with Russell’s attorney, Bruce Marcus, Crooks said Marcus would advise Russell about what else he needed to disclose to the defense.

Russell then argued for a delay, saying he had taken a back seat to Leitess on the case. He said it already was difficult to prepare the case because Houston invoked his right to be tried within six months of his first circuit court appearance.

“With two of us, it was ambitious,” Russell said. “With one, it’s untenable.”

Russell, who specializes in post-conviction litigation rather than jury trials, also said the appellate courts needed to decide the issue in his office’s appeal: Whether a judge could remove an elected prosecutor from a case and bar them from having any role in it.

“This is an elected official being wholly removed from her job. ... The lines where the separation of powers exists are being blurred every day,” Russell told Crooks.

Deputy State’s Attorney Brian Marsh told Crooks prosecutors from Montgomery County could try the case, but only with a postponement.

Unpersuaded, Crooks said there was almost no precedent from a mid-case appeal by the prosecution to guide him.

“I’m hoping your office will give you every single resource you need,” Crooks told Russell, adding, “The state made this bed and now they’re lying in it.”

Houston’s defense attorneys declined to comment. A spokesperson for Leitess’ office said another prosecutor had not been assigned to the case, but declined further comment.