News Photo by Julie Riddle During a videoconferenced hearing on Friday, Judge Roy Hayes, bottom, informs (from left) Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski and defense attorneys Matt Wojda, Dan White, and Alan Curtis that the upcoming trial for Heather Winfield will be delayed one month.

ALPENA — A judge stunned attorneys with the news that the trial for former Alpena Public Schools teacher Heather Winfield, scheduled to begin on Aug. 2 after two years of postponements, will have to wait another month.

Judge Roy Hayes, of Charlevoix County, who will preside over the trial, said in a Friday hearing that a rescheduled trial in his own county must take precedence over the Alpena case.

Already postponed multiple times since its original date in September 2019 because of late-arriving evidence, COVID-19 concerns, and other considerations, the Winfield trial will now begin Sept. 7, according to Hayes.

A former student accused Winfield of sexually assaulting him beginning in 2016. Winfield denies the charges.

This week, the Alpena County Clerk mailed instructions to 140 prospective jurors to appear on Aug. 2 at the Alpena APlex — chosen for jury selection for the Winfield trial because of the large pool of jurors needed for the trial.

Another summons will soon arrive in the mailboxes of those prospective jurors, providing new information about where and when to show up in September.

Defense attorneys resisted Hayes’ original suggestion that the jury still be chosen on Aug 2. Such a gap would ask too much of jurors instructed to neither speak of nor read about the case between their selection and the start of the trial, according to attorney Alan Curtis.

Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski observed that an early jury selection would provide jurors time to clear their calendars for the trial, expected to last two weeks.

Hayes — assigned to the Winfield case in 2019 because of scheduling conflicts on the part of Alpena-area judges — decided a later jury selection would best preserve the integrity of the trial.

A mistrial in Hayes’ Charlevoix courtroom — when the court ran out of prospective jurors — precipitated the Winfield trial delay.

In the Charlevoix trial, attorneys aggressively interrogated the prospective jurors to determine which to accept for the final jury, eliminating people Hayes had already declared fit to serve on the jury, the judge said.

Hayes will allow attorneys for the Winfield trial to probe for underlying beliefs and attitudes during the jury selection process but must minimize their questions, Hayes said.

To limit the number of people in one room during COVID-19 restrictions, the county in September sent questionnaires to 200 prospective jurors, some of whom were excused from reporting to jury duty.

Several of the remaining 140 potential Winfield jurors served as jurors at other trials earlier this month. Those people still need to show up for jury selection for the Winfield trial, according to court personnel present at Friday’s hearing.