LARGO, Fla. _ John Jonchuck appeared in a Pinellas County, Fla., courtroom on Thursday days before his upcoming murder trial.
Jonchuck, now 29, faces charges of first-degree murder, assault and fleeing police. He's accused of dropping his 5-year-old daughter, Phoebe Jonchuck, from a bridge near the Skyway on Jan. 8, 2015. She drowned in Tampa Bay.
Thursday's court hearing was to discuss two defense motions. The first motion is to prevent the term "psychopath" from making it into the trial, because it has the "strong likelihood to unduly prejudice the jury" against Jonchuck, his lawyers wrote. The second motion is to prevent testimony related to hypothermia as a contributing cause of Phoebe's death.
Jonchuck arrived in the Pinellas County jail on Wednesday ahead of his trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday and could take up to four weeks. He had been housed at the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center outside Gainesville, where he was undergoing treatment to improve his mental health.
Jonchuck was declared incompetent to stand trial shortly after his arrest, meaning he couldn't understand the charges he faced or the trial process. He was declared competent in 2017, yet courtroom delays repeatedly pushed back the trial date.
Prosecutors have dropped their death penalty bid, meaning if convicted of first-degree murder, Jonchuck will face an automatic lifetime prison sentence.
Defense lawyers plan to argue that Jonchuck should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, meaning he didn't know what he was doing when he let Phoebe go, or he didn't know it was wrong. If a jury makes that finding, Jonchuck will spend years, and likely the rest of his life, in a treatment facility.
