The courtroom was dark Thursday in the murder trial of David Winfield Mitchell after a prior engagement for one of his defense attorneys ran longer than anticipated.
Mitchell, 62, is being tried in the 1982 murder of Sheila Jo Harris, 18, a Gardnerville teen who had been living in her Carson City apartment just one week before her body was found.
Harris had been beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.
Mitchell, the groundskeeper at the complex where Harris lived, was arrested in the mid-1980s after a "Negroid" hair was found on Harris' linens, but he was later released for lack of evidence, according to court records.
In 1999, a DNA comparison of semen found at the scene and Mitchell's blood came back as a match, according to prosecutors. A criminal complaint was filed against him in December 2006, and Mitchell was extradited from his home country of Trinidad and Tobago in October.
He pleaded not guilty to the crime and remains in the Carson City Jail without bail.
Testimony in the jury trial is expected to resume today.
