Man denied new trial in homicide case
A North Union Township man convicted of stabbing his roommate to death in 2001 was denied a new trial in Fayette County Court. Bruce Allen Long, 45, was also denied a request to throw out all of the charges against him and release him from prison, according to a recent court opinion.
Long stabbed Walter Raymond Smith with a butcher knife on March 21, 2001, during an argument about finances. The knife punctured Smith’s lung, and he died a short time later. Long was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 16 to 40 years in prison.
Long claimed self-defense at his trial, and in his petition for a new trial, he claimed that his defense attorney erred when he did not request that a second knife at the scene be taken into custody and tested.
Long claimed that knife would have bolstered a claim of self-defense. However, Judge Ralph C. Warman wrote that Long never complained to police he was injured in the attack and never said Smith stabbed him.
The knife, wrote Warman, would not have shown anything if tested because police did examine the weapon and did not see any blood on it. The jurist opined that testing the knife would have been a “useless act.”
Long also claimed that his trial attorney, Public Defender Jeffrey Whiteko, should have brought out Smith’s prior homicide conviction at trial to show that he had a violent past.
According to Warman’s opinion, Smith was convicted of an unspecified degree of homicide 28 years ago, and served approximately two years in jail.
That conviction, however, “is much too remote from the current crime to have probative value and was not admissible at trial,” wrote Warman.