PORT ANGELES – The Clallam County Prosecutor’s Office made a crucial deadline Thursday in their effort to keep Tommy Ross Jr. in custody pending their court appeal to keep murder charges against him intact.

It’s a convoluted wrangling of legal procedure, but a basic breakdown reads like this:

Ross was freed from Clallam County jail on October 23 after Judge Coughenour rejected the Prosecutor’s attempt to charge him with the 1978 murder of Janet Bowcutt in Port Angeles.

He was picked up hours later in Clackamas County, Oregon when the Washington State Division 2 Court of Appeals granted a temporary emergency stay of that order. Meanwhile, the Prosecutor’s Office is filing for an appeal of Coughenour’s dismissal in their pursuit to charge him with murder.

Last week, a Commissioner from Division 2, Aurora Bearse, ruled that Ross should be released because murder charges were dismissed by Coughenour.

On Thursday the Prosecutor, in an attempt to keep Ross in jail while waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the murder charge, filed a last-ditch motion for a stay of Bearse’s ruling that will be considered by the full three-judge Court of Appeals.

Here’s Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Steve Johnson.