Court briefs
Uniontown man convicted Testimony begins
Trial gets under way
Goodwin lists witnesses
The attorney for convicted killer and former state police trooper Montgomery Clark Goodwin filed papers in Fayette County Court on Monday, listing five witnesses who would testify at an upcoming post-conviction hearing.
Attorney John S. Cupp Jr. said in the filing that Goodwin, his former defense attorney Thomas R. Ceraso, prosecution witnesses Joseph and Beverly Beal and county sheriff Gary D. Brownfield. He will be called in his capacity as a retired trooper who worked on the Goodwin case.
Goodwin, 63, of Connellsville is in prison, convicted of third-degree murder in the shooting death of Eugene “Jiggs” Williams.
Williams, shot in 1987, was the paramour of Goodwin’s estranged wife.
After his conviction in 1989, Goodwin was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison.
In motions filed, Goodwin wants his sentence vacated, or his conviction overturned. Cupp will appear before Judge Steve P. Leskinen later this month to argue that the attorneys who represented him at trial were ineffective and that prosecutors handicapped him by not revealing all of the necessary documents.
Cupp, according to this most recent filing, plans to call Goodwin and Ceraso to attest to the latter fact. The Beals, according to the filing, will testify in accordance with a letter they sent to the trial judge after Goodwin’s conviction. In that letter, the Beals claim that Deputy Attorney General Paul Von Geis, who prosecuted that case, and Brownfield twisted their statements to police.
Brownfield, according to the filing, will be questioned about two separate statements given by Williams’ wife.
Von Geis prosecuted the case to avoid any possible conflicts of interest because Goodwin had been a trooper based out of Uniontown. An out-of-county judge also presided at Goodwin’s trial.