Joseph Lumetta, who is accused of a 2020 plot to bomb the Warren County Courthouse, is invoking his right to a speedy trial more than two years after his arrest.

Lumetta, 37, is charged with attempting to cause a catastrophe, which Missouri classifies among its most serious felonies. He was arrested in January 2020 after police received a tip alleging that he planned to manufacture a fertilizer-based explosive device and set it off at the court if an upcoming criminal trial went poorly for him.

Attorneys with the Missouri Public Defender’s Office this month called on the court to set a trial for Lumetta within the next four months.

Lumetta’s alleged conflict with the court began with a 2016 robbery at the US Bank in Warrenton. Lumetta was arrested for the crime and charged with stealing in September 2017, a year after the robbery took place, when police used DNA evidence to connect him to the crime. Lumetta was released on bond three days after that arrest.

The trial for that stealing charge had been scheduled to take place in February 2020. But a month prior to the trial, Warren County Sheriff’s Department received the tip about the bomb plot. Lumetta is alleged to have said that if the trial didn’t go his way, “people will pay” and “it will be like Timothy McVeigh,” according to the sheriff’s department.

Timothy McVeigh is the perpetrator of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that killed more than 150 people. The bombs in that case were made from a large amount of fertilizer.

Deputies investigating the bomb threat reported that they found a custom-welded metal cylinder, consistent with construction of a pipe bomb, that Lumetta had allegedly manufactured at his workplace. Deputies also report to have found a 10-pound bag of fertilizer at Lumetta's home that could potentially be used to make an explosive.

Lumetta has remained in custody since his 2020 arrest. In the time since then, Lumetta pleaded guilty to the original stealing charge and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, according to court records. He is currently incarcerated at the Missouri Department of Corrections facility in Fulton, according to the court.

In their request for a speedy trial in the bombing case, Lumetta’s public defenders state that they are ready for trial and would like Judge Rebeca Navarro-McKelvey of St. Charles County to set the soonest possible trial date.

Judge Navarro-McKelvey was specially assigned to oversee the case in 2021, along with a special prosecutor from St. Charles County, Steven Kobal. The special assignments were made after Lumetta’s defenders raised objections to Prosecutor Kelly King handling the case. Because King would have been one of the intended victims of the alleged bomb plot, it would be a conflict of interests for her to prosecute the case, the defense claimed.

A March 8 hearing has been scheduled in St. Charles County Court to review the status of the case.