According to reprsentative, state AG’s office pleased with appeal’s denial
A representative of the state Attorney General’s office said that the office is pleased that the state Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of killer David J. Munchinski’s reinstated conviction. “But we don’t expect this will be the last we hear about this case,” said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a spokesman for the office.
Frederiksen said that the case could continue into the federal appeals process. Munchinski’s attorney, Noah Geary, has not returned calls for comment about the decision.
“It’s in Mr. Munchinski’s and his attorney’s hands at this point,” Frederiksen said.
The state prosecutors office took over the case several years ago, after Geary claimed that former county prosecutors withheld evidence in separate court proceedings. Those withheld documents, claimed Geary, could have changed the dual first-degree murder convictions that a jury found in 1986.
Munchinski was convicted of killing James P. Alford and Raymond Gierke at a Bear Rocks chalet in Bullskin Township on Dec. 2, 1977. Munchinski and co-defendant Leon Scaglione were arrested several years after the murders, when Richard Bowen came forward to tell state police that he was a getaway driver for the two.
Bowen’s statements, specifically an alleged tape recording of the first statement he made to county prosecutors, are at the center of the case.
After hearing testimony from former prosecutors and troopers, Northumberland County Senior Judge Barry F. Feudale ruled that prosecutors had to turn the tape over to Geary or Munchinski’s conviction would be vacated and retrial barred. Feudale was called in to hear the case because current judges Gerald R. Solomon and Ralph C. Warman were prosecutors at the time Munchinski was convicted.
Because prosecutors have maintained the tape was never made, Munchinski’s convictions were vacated in 2004. Prosecutors mounted an immediate appeal of the decision, and in 2005, the state Superior Court reversed Feudale’s decision, reinstating his convictions.
That court ruled that Munchinski’s appeal to Feudale was untimely and that portions already had been decided and dismissed.
Geary asked the state Supreme Court to review the case, but in the order handed down last week, the court declined to do so.