The judge delayed the hearing Tuesday at the request of Deputy Public Defender Ralph Benitez, who filled in for Munoz's regular public attorney, Enrique Colin. The defense awaits the completion of lab reports from the coroner's office, which Colin said could take up to two more months.

Munoz, 27, will appear in court again at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 21, at the Superior Courthouse in San Martin.

The district attorney's office has also charged Munoz with violating the conditions of his probation, and that case has been folded into the current proceedings. Munoz was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon by the same court in September 2006.

Gilroy police arrested Munoz the evening of March 25 in Gilroy on the charges related to the murder outside Rio Nilo. The arrest was a result of a tip that led undercover GPD officers to a migrant camp near Anderson Reservoir in unincorporated Morgan Hill, where Munoz's former employer was living.

That's where police located the convertible that matched witnesses descriptions from the crime scene, but the number-letter combination witnesses reported differed from the actual tags on the Chrysler Sebring registered to the defendant. Using DMV records, though, police matched the car to Munoz and then arrested him at his crowded Gilroy apartment for illegally possessing a single .380 round. They also recovered clothing and a towel that "appeared to have blood stains" and a 4-inch knife, according to court files and a statement of facts compiled by GPD Detective Stanley Devlin.

In the affidavit, Munoz told police that security guards removed him and a friend from Rio Nilo, 7474 Monterey St., because his friend was fighting with the two victims - Juan DeDios Arvizu Cabrera, 26, of Castroville, who eventually died outside the bar from multiple stab wounds, and Adan Arvizu Cabrera, 23, of Salinas, who suffered non-life threatening knife wounds, police said - but Munoz told police he never stabbed anyone as he sat in his car outside the bar while his friends got into the fight.