Fugitive who faked death refuses court appearance
- Published
Nicholas Rossi refused to appear at his latest court hearing in the US
A man extradited from Scotland to America after faking his death to avoid rape charges has refused to appear at his latest court hearing.
Nicholas Rossi spent more than two years fighting the case claiming to be an Irish orphan called Arthur Knight.
Judge Derek Pullan, of Utah's Fourth District Court, was told Rossi would not appear by video link from prison on Monday.
A new date of 6 February has been set for his appearance.
Judge Pullan told the court that if Rossi was not ill then he would "authorise reasonable force to compel his attendance".
The 36-year-old previously appeared by video link at the Third District Court in Utah last Tuesday.
He was arrested under an international arrest warrant in December 2021 after being admitted to hospital in Glasgow with Covid.
He claimed to have been the victim of mistaken identity and insisted his name was Arthur Knight.
But in November 2022 a sheriff in Edinburgh ruled that he was Nicholas Rossi after hearing that his tattoos and fingerprints matched.
He lost his final appeal against extradition on 14 December last year.
Prosecutors in Utah said he was charged with raping a 21-year-old woman in 2008.
Rossi was not identified as a suspect until about a decade later due to a backlog of DNA test kits at the state's crime lab.
During the previous hearing, he denied being Nicholas Rossi and said his name was Arthur Knight Brown.