Superior Court upholds Greene County man’s murder conviction
A panel of Superior Court judges issued an opinion Monday affirming the sentence of a Greene County man who pleaded guilty to killing his estranged wife in 2009 and soliciting his 12-year-old son’s help to pull it off.
Scott Baker, 42, of Nemacolin, pleaded guilty after seven days of trial testimony in December 2011 to a general count of criminal homicide, and admitted to strangling and slashing the throat of 30-year-old Melissa Baker.
Greene County President Judge William R. Nalitz handed down a mandatory term of life imprisonment after a jury heard the facts of the case and decided his degree of guilt.
Scott Baker appealed to the Superior Court in 2012, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence presented at trial, as well as the admission of certain pieces of evidence and the instructions given to jurors.
In an opinion authored by Superior Court President Judge Emeritus Kate Ford Elliott, the panel of judges — including Elliott, Judge Jacqueline O. Shogan and Senior Judge Eugene B. Strassburger — rejected each of Scott Bakers challenges.
The judges first pointed out that challenges to sufficiency of evidence are not properly argued before the appellate court. No relief is due when an appellant questions whether the evidence was sufficient for jurors to consider, only when the questions deal with the weight of the evidence, Elliot noted.
“Nevertheless, we find the Commonwealth provided sufficient evidence to prove each element of first-degree murder,” Elliott wrote.
To convict a defendant of first-degree murder, prosecutors must prove that a human being was unlawfully killed, the defendant was responsible for the killing and the defendant acted with malice and a specific intent to kill, Elliott wrote, and through both direct and circumstantial evidence, the prosecution proved all three.
At trial, District Attorney Marjorie Fox successfully argued that Scott Baker recruited his son from a prior relationship, Nathaniel Baker, to use as an alibi in his plot to kill Melissa Baker, whose 20-month-old son, Brett Baker, was present during the murder.
During the trial, Nathaniel Baker testified that his father told him that his stepmother was going to “disappear” and then formed a plan to kill her while Nathaniel Baker went to the bathroom at her mobile home. Nathaniel Baker also said his father kept him home from school on that day and instructed him to tell the police that they were at home all day when the killing occurred.
During his testimony, Scott Baker said he “blacked out” after arguing with his wife, and when he came to, he was on top of her with his forearm around her neck. Contrary to the prosecution’s claims, Scott Baker maintained that he didn’t recruit his son to help him plan his wife’s murder because there was no plan.
The Superior Court also disagreed with Scott Baker’s contention that he was not able to form intent because he was using alcohol prior to the incident. The appellate judges found that the prosecution correctly argued that his use or abuse of alcohol was not a valid defense against the homicide charge.
“The mere fact of intoxication does not give rise to a diminished capacity defense,” the court’s opinion stated.
In addition to the life sentence for first-degree murder, Baker was sentenced to consecutive sentences of 10 to 20 years for criminal solicitation to commit homicide and 1 to 2 years for intimidation of a witness, as well as two concurrent 3- to 6-month sentences for tampering with evidence and criminal solicitation to commit tampering of evidence.
In a dissenting opinion filed along with the court’s affirmation of sentence, Strassburger wrote that while he concurred with the other jurists that the majority of Scott Baker’s claims on appeal did not entitle him to relief, he did not believe sufficient evidence was presented to convict the defendant of intimidation of a witness.
While Scott Baker argued that the prosecution did not establish proof of any force, threat, intimidation or other means of causing Nathaniel Baker to act, the Superior Court found that there was no requirement that prosecutors establish that a threat was actually made. A father telling his 12-year-old son to do something, especially one who is “an imposing physical figure,” is intimidating, the court found.
Strassburger disagreed, writing that the father instructed his son and his son complied, but that was not enough to support a conviction for witness intimidation in light of established case law.
“While (Scott Baker’s) conduct in using his young son to assist him in committing murder may have been reprehensible, this alone does not support appellant’s conviction,” Strassburger concluded.
Scott Baker is currently serving his sentence at the State Correctional Institution at Albion in Erie County.