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Attorney moves to dismiss 2007 homicide case against mentally ill man

By Susy Kelly skelly@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read

The attorney representing a mentally incompetent Uniontown man who has been in custody for eight and a half years without trial on a homicide charge is asking a Fayette County judge to dismiss the case.

Craig Geness, 48, is accused of causing another man at the Uniontown personal care home where both resided to fall off a wall to his death in 2006. According to a motion filed by attorney Bernadette Tummons, who took up Geness’ case in 2012, the commonwealth doesn’t have enough evidence to prove a homicide occurred.

The decedent, 61-year-old Ronald Fiffik, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, as well as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and diabetes. According to a police affidavit, on Oct. 27, 2006, Geness became agitated about something Fiffik said to him and shouted at him to shut up before pushing him off the wall he was sitting on. Fiffik died three weeks later.

Uniontown police charged Geness with aggravated assault on Nov. 17, 2006, and three days later the charge was elevated to criminal homicide, after Dr. Cyril Wecht performed an autopsy which determined Fiffik’s death was “due to bronchopneumonia along with pulmonary edema and pulmonary congestion, secondary to extensive fractures of the right rib cage posteriorly sustained as a result of the fall.”

According to Tummons’ motion, an eyewitness indicated Fiffik fell on his own.

“The victim’s wife, a witness to her husband’s fall, stated that ‘…he walked out onto the porch and fell down approximately five steps head first, and he was unresponsive for approximately two minutes,'” Tummons wrote.

Additionally, Tummons argued, a statement from the emergency room physician who treated Fiffik indicated he “has MR (mental retardation) and is unsteady and is not supposed to go near the stairs, but he did and then he fell down them.”

Tummons noted the statement police took from the owner of the personal care home, James McVey, indicated that he was standing in the kitchen but could not see Geness when he allegedly heard him scream “shut up.” McVey told police he saw Geness come inside, and then found Fiffik lying on the ground outside.

In June 2007, Geness was found incompetent to stand trial. In 2011, still not having been determined competent, Geness was released to a treatment facility and fitted with an ankle bracelet monitor, court records show. He has been in custody and control of the adult probation office ever since.

Tummons wrote in the motion submitted last week that it took over two years for her office to receive discovery information — or disclosures about evidence gathered from the investigation — from District Attorney Jack R. Heneks Jr.’s office, and that when the documents were handed over, there were no annual evaluations for Geness, though court ordered.

There were also no psychiatric reports, no information indicating whether Geness had even been transported to Mayview or Torrance State Hospitals as ordered, and the Fayette County Prison has destroyed all records related to Geness, Tummons wrote.

In addition to asking for the case to be dismissed, Tummons also moved to have any statements Geness made to police thrown out.

Court records show that when Uniontown police Chief Jason Cox, then a detective, interviewed Geness in November 2007 at Highlands Hospital, where he had been involuntarily committed, Geness told him that “voices inside his head told him to push Fiffik over the wall. (Geness) advised that he then shoved Fiffik hard over the wall, went up to his bedroom, and shut the door.”

Tummons stated Cox read the Miranda warnings against self-incrimination to Geness and that Geness signed his name.

Because Geness was intellectually challenged, mentally ill, and a patient in the mental health ward at Highlands Hospital, he did not have the mental capacity, nor have the understanding sufficient to make a knowing and voluntary waiver of his constitutional rights, Tummons argued. She asked for any statements her client made to police to be suppressed.

A hearing on the motions to dismiss and suppress statements will be scheduled at a later date.

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