A Brooklyn judge wants to try the accused man in the murder of graduate student Imette St. Guillen as soon as January, even as the defendant, Darryl Littlejohn, faces unrelated criminal charges in state Supreme Court in Queens. In a pretrial proceeding at state Supreme Court in Brooklyn yesterday, Judge Cheryl Chambers asked both parties for mutually agreeable dates to begin the trial, and ordered another pretrial meeting for October 11.

While the prosecution is ready to go to trial, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said, the defense attorney, Joyce David, told Judge Chambers that she needs more time to organize her client’s case to present it before a jury.

“I don’t want to be rushed,” Ms. David, a criminal attorney who is working on the case pro bono, told The New York Sun. “The client wanted me and I wanted the case, but he’s still entitled to the same resources as if a lawyer had been appointed to represent him.”

Littlejohn, 42, is charged with the murder of 24-year-old St. Guillen, a graduate criminology student at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In February 2006, her body was found bound and strangled in Brooklyn, one day after she had last been seen at a SoHo bar where Littlejohn worked as a bouncer. Littlejohn has served time in prison for armed robbery and drug dealing. Prosecutors turned over nearly 10,000 pages of evidence to the defense in June, and Ms. David told the judge yesterday she needs more time to read through it and consult with experts.

Littlejohn will appear in the Queens court on September 19 for a proceeding on charges he faces related to the kidnapping, assault, and robbery of a Queens teenager in 2005.