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Hopwood man accused in fatal beating asks to be spared capital punishment

By Susy Kelly skelly@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read

The attorney for a Hopwood man accused as a co-conspirator in the fatal beating of a Connellsville woman last summer has filed an amended motion seeking to have the death penalty taken off the table.

Fayette County Public Defender Jeffrey Whiteko argued in documents filed on Tuesday that the death penalty is unconstitutional and unfair, and that the prosecution should be barred from seeking that sentence, should 25-year-old Paul Bannasch be convicted of first-degree murder.

Bannasch is one of two men charged in connection with the death of 52-year-old Margaret “Peggy” Kriek, whose badly beaten body was discovered in the Youghiogheny River by a troop of Boy Scouts in Dunbar Township on June 23.

Bannasch and the other man, 25-year-old Craig Rugg of Connellsville, face 13 charges each, including criminal homicide, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and kidnapping. District Attorney Jack R. Heneks Jr. has filed notices that his office will seek the death penalty against both defendants.

The two aggravating circumstances the Commonwealth offered that elevate the alleged homicide to a capital offense are that the killing was carried out while in the course of committing felonies, and that the killing was committed by means of torture.

Whiteko argued in Tuesday’s motion that the prosecution did not give Bannasch an opportunity to present any mitigating information prior to Heneks announcing that the death penalty would be sought, including testimony about his character and background.

“This procedure fails to provide any check on prosecutorial power by failing to require a determination that probable cause exists to find an aggravating factor, and that probable cause exists for a sentence of death,” Whiteko wrote.

Those failure amount to a violation of the state constitution as well as the due process and cruel and unusual punishment provisions within the U.S. Constitution, he added.

Whiteko also objected to the inclusion of victim impact testimony in the penalty phase of the trial, should Bannasch be convicted. He contended that the process by which jurors are allowed to consider victim impact evidence is arbitrary and capricious, that there is no standard of proof where victim impact statements are concerned nor any guidance as to whether jurors have to be unanimous in their findings regarding such statements.

Additionally, Whiteko argued against the death penalty as a sentence that is imposed incorrectly and unjustly in many instances, citing statistics from around the country and specific to Pennsylvania. Between 1973 and 2010, Whiteko wrote, 38 percent of death penalty sentences or convictions were overturned, and the average number of years defendants spent on death row through the appeals process was 14.6.

“The high rate of error, coupled with the prolonged delay before such errors are detected in capital sentencing, creates an undue risk that Pennsylvania’s capital sentencing scheme will allow for the executing of innocent people in violation of substantive due process, and deprive innocent people of a significant opportunity to prove their innocence in violation of procedural due process,” wrote Whiteko.

Whiteko is asking that, should the prosecution be allowed to continue pursuing capital punishment for Bannasch, the court authorize splitting the guilt and penalty phases of the trial between two separate juries, and that the court exclude victim impact statements.

A judge will rule on the motion at a later date.

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