Posted on 05/18/2018 9:25:24 AM PDT by Simon Green
A Pennsylvania cop killer on death row wants the state Supreme Court to toss out his 2017 conviction.
Attorneys for 35-year-old Eric Frein will argue Thursday investigators in Pike County violated his right to remain silent the night he was captured for murdering one state officer, Cpl. Bryon Dickson, and seriously wounding another, Trooper Alex Douglass, nearly four years ago.
Frein led state and federal law enforcement on a 48-day manhunt through the Pocono Mountains after gunning down Dickson and Douglass during a shift change at the Blooming Grove barracks on Sept. 12, 2014. He was identified as a suspect early-on in the case after a neighbor found his vehicle abandoned in a drainage pond near the shooting, according to the Associated Press.
Prosecutors called Frein a terrorist and said he ambushed the troopers in hopes of starting a revolution. Frein told investigators he chose the barracks in rural Pike County, about 30 miles south of the New York border, because of the desolate, mountain landscape surrounding it.
In April 2017, jurors found Frein guilty of murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, terrorism, possessing weapons of mass destruction, possessing an instrument of crime, recklessly endangering others and firing a gun into an occupied structure. He was sentenced to death a week later.
Now Frein’s legal team said investigators refused to let his family’s defense attorney speak with Frein the night he was arrested at an abandoned air strip 30 miles from the barracks. Instead, he was interrogated for more than three hours, during which time he confessed to the killings.
“The questioning at issue occurred after Mr. Frein was read his Miranda warnings, invoked his right to silence by clearly informing the troopers that he did not want to speak about any crime and refused to sign a Miranda waiver,” his lawyers argued in a brief filed in November, according to the Associated Press.
Pike County prosecutors argue Frein never asserted his right to legal representation and balked at claims that victim impact testimony allowed during the trial hurt him.
Although Frein currently sits on Pennsylvania’s death row, it remains unclear if he will ever face execution. Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration ordered executions to a halt in February 2015, preferring instead to wait for the results of a Senate task force’s review of the state’s death penalty system.
More than 170 people sit on death row in Pennsylvania and the state hasn’t executed a single one since 1999. Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty four decades ago, Pennsylvania carried out only three executions.
I might agree with you - but LEOs don't let peasants take the liberties that they do.
They're around to remind us that .gov can spit in our faces with people like Manson dying in prison of old age.
Frein was captured by U.S. Marshals in an open field near an unused airport hangar at Birchwood-Pocono Airpark, an abandoned airfield approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) ENE of Tannersville, on October 30, 2014, 48 days after the shooting. At the time of his arrest, he was not armed, but a .308-caliber rifle and a pistol were recovered.
Frein was arrested without incident. Although he did not resist arrest, he suffered a cut to the bridge of his nose, as well as a scrape over his left eye and bruises to his cheeks and eyes. A Pennsylvania State Police spokesman said these injuries occurred while he was on the run, but the U.S. Marshals said this occurred while police had him down on the pavement during his arrest.
According to Scott Malkowski, one of a dozen Marshals who took down Frein, standard procedure is "Never have a fugitive look at you", and because Frein went down in a position with head up looking at the officers, they pushed him to a face down position causing the scrapes in the process.
Symbolically, Frein was restrained after the arrest using the handcuffs of deceased officer Bryan Dickson and taken to the barracks where the attack occurred in the back seat of Dickson's car.
Try pulling this kind of tribal revenge on a suspect that did one of yours wrong, Ironjack, and see what the Criminal Jesters System does to you.
I would even go so far as to say that if a citizen took down a dirty cop, no one but the other dirty cops would be overly offended.
And I don't have any more use for self-righteous cops than anyone else.
MUMIA IS STILL ALIVE, OVER 3 DECADES FOR KILLING A LEO.
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