YOUNGSTOWN — Judge Maureen Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court has again postponed the retrial of Robert L. Moore in the 2009 disappearance and presumed murder of 16-year-old Glenna White from a Smith Township home.

Sweeney issued a judgment entry postponing the Monday retrial because of questions about “information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”

The filing states that on Wednesday, attorneys from the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office and defense attorney Lou DeFabio approached the court “with newly discovered information regarding the case.”

It stated that the parties “are in receipt of information from National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a case file is present and available” on White.

The filing does not say what kind of new information is contained in the file, but the parties “jointly requested a continuance of the trial set for Jan. 23, 2023,” and the judge approved it, setting a pretrial hearing for 9 a.m. Jan. 30.

The entry orders the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to provide a copy of its documents in the White case, including the “full investigative file” for White and “all notes pertaining to this matter,” as well as “any additional documentation related to the … investigation.”

The entry orders that all “records are to be delivered to this court by Jan. 25, 2023” at noon.

A review of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website and other websites regarding missing children does not provide any information as to what is in the White file that may have caused the trial delay.

A week ago the trial was postponed from Jan 17 to Jan. 23 because of the unavailability of a witness.

A Mahoning County Common Pleas Court jury last June found Moore, 52, of Alliance, not guilty of aggravated murder in White’s presumed murder but could not reach a verdict on murder, and prosecutors chose to retry Moore.

Last week, Sweeney also denied a renewed defense motion asking that “other acts” evidence in the case be suppressed from Moore’s retrial. DeFabio argued at a hearing that case law supports suppression of such evidence, but the judge ruled the evidence can be presented in the retrial, just as it was in the first trial.

Among the “other acts” evidence the defense wants to keep out of the trial is information about the crimes Moore committed in the past.

Sweeney said she will allow the parties to provide the jury with a “limiting instruction admonishing the jury not to consider the other acts evidence as proof of (Moore’s) character or propensity to commit a crime.”

erunyan@vindy.com