The federal case against a Stoughton cop accused of grooming, impregnating and then killing a Canton woman named Sandra Birchmore has been delayed again — as the accused killer adds a death penalty specialist to his defense team.

“The defendant requests that the conference be continued for approximately thirty days and the government does not object,” U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge M. Page Kelley wrote this week.

Kelley approved the request, stating that allowing “the parties time to prepare the case for trial or other disposition, outweigh the best interests of the public and defendant for a trial within seventy days of the date of indictment.”

It was the first docket entry in nearly two months in the case against Matthew Farwell, 38, of North Easton. It was quickly followed by the addition of two attorneys to his team: Joanne Daley of the Rhode Island Federal Public Defender office and Kimberly Stevens, an assistant federal public defender specializing in death penalty defenses.

Federal prosecutors say Farwell groomed Birchmore while she was still a child. He then, they say, entered into a sexual relationship with her, impregnated her and then strangled the then-23-year-old to death in her Canton apartment on Feb. 1, 2021 — staging it to look like a suicide. During all of it he was employed as Stoughton Police Officer.

The last docket update was April 29, when Kelley issued another order to push in-person conferences in the case. The case began with a criminal complaint and the arrest of Farwell last August.

In April’s entry, Kelley noted that “Discovery is voluminous” in the case “and the parties are making good progress.”

It’s been an issue going back at least as far as last October, when another court hearing was pushed back as attorneys dealt with the sheer amount of evidence to review.

“The government has produced voluminous discovery that, in its view, goes beyond its obligations under the federal and local rules,” a joint memo indicating the status of the case stated then.

“Murder” is not a federal crime, and so Farwell is instead charged with killing a witness to a federal crime — namely, engaging in sex with Birchmore while on the clock as a police officer.

Local authorities in Norfolk County deemed Birchmore’s death a suicide and declined to prosecute before federal authorities took up the case. While Massachusetts is not a death penalty state, federal law allows for the death penalty, which prosecutors may take up in this case.

In preparation for that reality, a North Carolina-based public defender who specializes in defending those accused in death penalty cases officially joined the case Thursday.

Kimberly Stevens is a “full-time Capital Resource Counsel, where she directly represents persons charged in federal capital cases around the country, and provides advice and training to trial teams as well,” according to the Federal Capital Trial Project website.

She has represented around 45 men and women in death penalty cases in both state and federal court, including Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who shot nine people to death at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

Matthew Farwell (Stoughton Police Department via AP)