The trial of state Sen. Robert Regola, R-Hempfield, charged with perjury in connection with the shooting death of his teenage neighbor in 2006, has been delayed at least until May.

At a pre-trial hearing yesterday, the senator's lawyers asked a judge to throw out the case and aired numerous other arguments first raised in a motion they filed nearly four months ago, including requests for change of venue and transferring the case from the district attorney.

Westmoreland County Common Pleas Judge John E. Blahovec didn't make any rulings and gave the lawyers a month to submit briefs.

The prosecution will then have 15 days to answer, pushing the trial from the March calender and into May.

Mr. Regola, 45, is accused of perjury, reckless endangerment and a gun offense in the July 2006 death of Louis Farrell.

Louis was watching the Regola family's dog while the senator and his wife were in Harrisburg. Coroner Ken Bacha ruled that he shot himself with the senator's pistol in the woods behind his house.

The Farrell family doesn't believe Louis killed himself and has suggested that Louis was in the company of the senator's son, Bobby, then 16, when he was shot.

Bobby Regola has been adjudicated delinquent for possession of the gun, although no details of that court proceeding are available because it was a juvenile case.

The key legal issue for Mr. Regola's trial is where the gun was stored in his home.

Prosecutors contend it was kept in Bobby's bedroom and that the senator lied during the coroner's inquest when he said it was under the bed in his own room.

His defense is that Louis took the weapon from his house without permission.

His lawyers, Charles Porter and Duke George, say there's no evidence to support the claim that the gun was kept anywhere else.

But District Attorney John Peck says the senator initially told state police that the gun had been in his son's room and later changed his story when he realized he could be charged with allowing a minor to have the weapon.

The district attorney characterized the conflicting accounts as an "irreconcilable contradiction."

One of the prosecution's witnesses is another teenager who said Bobby Regola showed him and Louis a similar gun in Bobby's bedroom a year before the shooting.

Mr. Peck argues that proves the gun had been stored in Bobby's room, but Mr. Porter disagrees because that weapon might have been a toy. And even if it was a real gun, he said, there's no evidence proving it was the same weapon that killed Louis.

Mr. Regola's lawyers also asked that Mr. Peck be removed from the case because he held a news conference shortly after Louis's body was found in which he said the boy killed himself and that Mr. Regola and his son had done nothing wrong.

Mr. Porter asked that a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story quoting Mr. Peck to that effect be introduced as part of the court record.

Mr. Peck didn't object but pointed out that he was rendering an opinion based on the facts as they were relayed to him by state police at the time.

Among many other defense motions, Mr. Porter also asked for a change of venue because of pre-trial publicity.

The judge said he won't be able to rule on that issue until jury selection starts.