After two trials, West Chester attorney guilty in father’s death

Editor’s Note: Due to a production error, the entire No. 4 Chester County Story of the Year did not run in full in Thursday’s print edition of the Daily Local News.

The case of Commonwealth vs. Edward O’Brien III played out this year over two trials, spanning two months, in two different courtrooms, heard by two different juries, with two competing versions of events, and with two different results.

But eventually O’Brien, a stocky 61-year-old West Chester attorney, was found guilty of third-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, and recklessly endangering another person in the 2013 death of his father, 92-yearold Edward J. O’Brien Jr. at the home they shared in West Whiteland.

His trials were one of the top stories in the Daily Local News in 2016.

The trials examined in stark terms the question of whether the elder O’Brien — a World War II veteran and longtime postal carrier from New Jersey — was purposefully allowed to wither away and die, “drowned in his own fluids” as the prosecution contended, in violation of criminal law — or whether he passed away naturally by his own wishes, as the younger O’Brien’s defense attorney insisted.

“As established during trial, Mr. O’Brien Jr., an elderly World War II veteran, suffered greatly, for a long period of time, at the hands of Mr. O’Brien II, his own son,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Ronald Yen wrote in a memo asking Judge Ann Marie Wheatcraft, who presided over the two trials, to impose a prison term on O’Brien..

Joseph P. Green Jr., the West Chester criminal defense attorney who represented O;’Brien III though the case, said however that, “Edward O’Brien Jr. decided for himself when he wanted medical care and when he didn’t, suggesting that his son would have granted his father’s wish to seek help if he had voiced it. That is the essence of this case.”

The first trial was held in February, with a jury panel of six men and six woman — most of them appearing to be under the age of 50 — ultimately unable to reach a unanimous conclusion of O’Brien III’s guilt or innocence. Wheatcraft was forced to declare a mistrial, with observers saying that the jurors appeared to favor the defense case.

In June, O’Brien III was put on trial a second time, with the jury of seven men and five women — this time including mostly older citizens — returning with a guilty verdict. He had been arrested in April 2015, and at one point saw the murder charges against him dismissed at the district court level. They were later refiled.

In August, Wheatcraft imposed a state prison term for the soft-spoken attorney.

Wheatcraft agreed with the prosecution that a term of five to 10 years behind bars was appropriate in the case, both because it took into account O’Brien III’s advanced age and his lack of a criminal record, but also because anything less would send the wrong message.

“If I impose a sentence that is any less … I would be depreciating the seriousness of the crime,” Wheatcraft said in handing down her sentence to a hushed courtroom.

O’Brien III, who had maintained through the two trials that he was acting on his elderly father’s long-held wishes that he not be taken to a nursing home or be cared for by strangers, declined to make any statement before Wheatcraft handed down her sentence. Wheatcraft allowed O’Brien III to remain free on bail pending an appeal of the case. Green indicated he intended to challenge a jury instruction that Wheatcraft had given in the case regarding the burden of proof.

In his argument to the court, Green said that Wheatcraft could sentence O’Brien to a term in Chester County Prison with a minimum length of 11 ½ months. He suggested that the judge look to the offense of neglect of a care dependent person as a standard by which to judge the “culpable conduct” of his client.

Green said he was at a loss to determine what conduct the jury had based its finding on — was it failure to treat bedsores that plagued the elder O’Brien or was it failure to get him medical treatment — and thus could not properly argue what the appropriate sentence should be.

But, he added, “if there was ever a case in which a court should depart from the (sentencing) guidelines, it is this.” Green said that Wheatcraft should imagine the “real world” impact that sending a person such as his client — a 61-year-old who had never had a brush with the law — to the harsh world of a state prison in forming her sentence. “I ask your honor to think about those consequences,” he said.

Wheatcraft rejected the notion that she could take the neglect statute into account in sentencing O’Brien III. The jury had heard more than a week’s worth of evidence about the care — or lack thereof — that O’Brien Jr. had received before and after he went to live with his son at a townhouse in West Whiteland from his home in New Jersey, and concluded that the defendant had committed a murder, she said.

“I don’t see how I can do the gymnastics” of using the neglect statute, which applies to certified care givers. “That simply is not in this case.”

O’Brien III was accused by West Whiteland police — including Officer Jason Madormo and former investigator Kristin Lund, now with the Chester County Detectives Office — of allowing his father to languish in the second floor bedroom of their home for 28 months. He was accused of depriving him off medication for his congestive heart condition, not taking him to see a doctor — except on one brief occasion — and of keeping him from the regular nursing care he was said to require.

O’Brien Jr. died on Sept. 8, 2013, at the age of 92, suffering from heart failure. But the case essentially began more than two years earlier, as testimony in the nine-day trial indicated.

In April 2011, the elder man, then 90, slipped and fell in his bathroom. He was taken first to Our Lady or Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, N.J., and then to Cooper River West rehabilitation hospital. After a few weeks of rehab, a doctor signed his release after staff there determined they could no longer do anything to assist him further, and O’Brien III indicated that the hospitalization was too expensive.

But when a social service worker at Cooper River West learned that O’Brien Jr. had been released without a plan in place for around-theclock nursing home care, she called Collingwood, N.J., police officers and told them that he was not safe living alone.

When the local police officers went to O’Brien Jr.’s home on May 30, 2011 they told him and his son that they would not allow the elder man to stay by himself. O’Brien then packed up some belongings for his father, and took him back to the town home he shared in West Whiteland with his partner, Sameer Rasheed.

The prosecution, in its case, presented evidence that showed that when O’Brien Jr. moved into that home, the amount of medical care he received and doctor’s visits he attended dropped precipitously. Although he had been a regular visitor to his personal physician’s office in the years before, after moving to West Whiteland he only saw a doctor once — on an emergency visit to Chester County Hospital in October 2011.

Staff there found him unkempt, with food in his hair, and complaining of chest pains. There was a recommendation that he be given visiting nurse treatment. That did not happen, with the prosecution alleging that O’Brien III avoided it and the defense saying that the nursing organization did not follow up on appointment requests O’Brien III made. Moreover, O’Brien III stressed that his father had not wanted to be cared for by nurses in the home.

O’Brien Jr.’s prescription for Lasix, a medication used to treat congestive heart problems, was also allowed to lapse. Testimony showed that O’Brien’s prescription was not filled more than once after he moved to Pennsylvania, and there were unused pills in his room when he died. O’Brien III said his father had asked to stop taking the drug.