Aug 6, 2011 2 min read

A federal magistrate judge found that evidence not turned over to a Latrobe man’s defense attorney more than two decades ago made his dual first-degree murder convictions “unworthy of confidence.”

In an 80-page opinion handed down Friday, Chief Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan reversed David Munchinski’s convictions, and gave prosecutors four months to retry him in Fayette County court for the shooting deaths of Raymond Alford and James P. Gierke. The men were killed at a home in Bear Rocks on Dec. 2, 1977.

Munchinski and Leon Scaglione were arrested five years later, and both were convicted in 1986 and sentenced to life in prison.

Lenihan, in her opinion, found that there were seven pieces of evidence that should have been turned over to Munchinski’s defense attorney, and could have led jurors to question the credibility of key commonwealth witness, Richard Bowen.

In 1981, Bowen came forward to police, and initially said that Scaglione confessed the murders to him in prison. Throughout the course of several more statements, Bowen told police and prosecutors that he was an eyewitness to the slayings and testified to that at trial.

Both Bowen and Scaglione died several years ago.

However, Lenihan found that seven pieces of evidence – including three reports where informants told police others killed Alford and Gierke – could have poked holes in Bowen’s testimony had they been turned over to Munchinski’s defense attorney during his trial.

Other evidence not turned over included medical evidence that could have brought Bowen’s testimony into question, Lenihan found.

“It is impossible to understate the importance of Bowen’s testimony to the prosecution’s case,” Lenihan wrote, noting that there was no direct evidence to link Munchinski to the killings.

For more information, read Sunday’s HeraldStandard.com