Munchinski evidence to undergo DNA testing
Evidence that a man convicted of dual 1986 slayings in a Bullskin Township home hopes could clear him of the crime will be turned over for DNA testing. At the request of the attorney for David Munchinski, Senior Judge Barry F. Feudale ordered state police offices, as well as Highlands Hospital in Connellsville and the county coroner’s office, to turn over swabs and scrapings collected in the investigation into the deaths of Raymond P. Gierke and James P. Alford.
Munchinski, who has maintained his innocence in the double murder, was convicted along with accomplice Leon Scaglione of killing the men. Both men were sentenced to dual life terms in prison, although Scaglione has since died in prison.
Through his attorney, Noah Geary of Washington, Munchinski hopes to use DNA evidence to clear him of the crimes.
Included in that DNA evidence is rectal swabs and smears, semen or sperm evidence, nail scrapings and clippings and blood evidence that police may have collected.
Alford and Gierke were killed in a Bear Rocks chalet. According to testimony from the commonwealth’s star witness, Richard Bowen, he was with Munchinski and Scaglione when they anally raped and then killed the men.
Geary, however, contends that recently discovered state police reports indicate that Bowen was in Oklahoma at the time of the killings.
Feudale ordered that representatives from both the commonwealth and defense should accompany any evidence to Cellmark Diagnostic Inc. for DNA testing. The lab is in Germantown, Md.
Feudale, from York, scheduled a March 19 hearing to address any additional evidence in the case and ordered Munchinski brought back to Fayette County from the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh.
Although the Fayette County district attorney’s office was handling the case and initially prosecuted Munchinski, concerns raised by Geary that pieces of evidence were intentionally withheld prompted the office to withdraw. The attorney general’s office is now handling the matter.
Since some of the county’s sitting judges were prosecutors at the time of Munchinski’s trial, former President Judge William J. Franks removed the county bench from deciding the post-conviction action.
Among the accusations made by Geary is one that Judge Ralph C. Warman, district attorney at the time of Munchinski’s trial, intentionally deleted pertinent information from a police report before turning it over to the defense.
Geary also said before that he intended to call Judge Gerald R. Solomon and Franks to the stand, as well as First Administrative Assistant District Attorney John A. Kopas III, all of whom have dealt with the case in different aspects.
Testimony from some of those people could be presented at the March 19 hearing.
Feudale also ordered that any video or audio tapes of interviews with Bowen, all photographs from the crime scene, any police reports and a complete coroner’s report be turned over to Geary. Additionally, Feudale allowed Geary to inspect the files the district attorney’s office has on Munchinski’s case, “in light of … allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and knowing use of perjury.”
Although Feudale ordered those pieces of evidence be turned over, his order also acknowledged that prosecutors have said that some of that evidence simply does not exist. He asked for a reply listing the items within 60 days.