Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Chesco jury being chosen to weigh fate of suspect in shooting of trooper
Death penalty a possibility for 33-year-old Eric Frein
Media presence and new courtroom faces descended on the Chester County Justice Center Thursday as the process got underway to select a jury panel to hear the death penalty case of a Monroe County man accused of shooting two state troopers, killing one, in rural Pike County.
The jury was ordered chosen from Chester County because extensive pre-trial publicity had so tainted the jury pool in the sparsely populated county along the northern border with New York that selecting an impartial jury there would have been impossible, the judge overseeing the
case ruled earlier.
Not that the attention paid to the fatal shooting of the trooper and subsequent manhunt for the alleged killer, Eric Frein, was any less in Chester County. When Pike County Common Pleas Judge Gregory J. Chelak asked the assembled prospective jurors if any had read or viewed news account of the case, 71 or the 104 men and women stood to indicate they had.
But, as observers point out, simply hearing about the case is not enough to excuse one from the eventual panel of 12 jurors and six alternates; one must have so fixed an opinion based on what they know that they would be unable to be a fair and impartial juror.
No panelists were selected Thursday. The process will continue today with a second pool of more than 100 county residents, and potentially into the following two weeks. The trial is scheduled to begin in Milford, Pike County, on Monday, April 3, and continue for several weeks. The jurors will be sequestered in Pike County for the duration of the trial.
Frein’s case has drawn intense media scrutiny since the two troopers were ambushed as they left the state police barracks at Blooming Grove on Sept. 12, 2014. Killed was Cpl. Brian Dickson, while fellow Trooper Alex Douglas was wounded. On Thursday that attention was on display both outside the courthouse and inside the elegant confines of Courtroom One of the courthouse.
“I’ve never seen so many reporters,” said one courthouse employee as she walked into the building’s lobby under the watchful gaze of Chester County detectives
and sheriff’s deputies, having just passed a gaggle of cameramen standing along the alley that runs behind the Justice Center where a sheriff’s van holding Frein arrived around 8 a.m. It was the only vantage point for the television crews to get a glimpse, however brief and obscured, of the defendant making his way to court.
Streets surrounding the courthouse were also lined with television and radio news vans, from stations in Philadelphia but also Allentown, Harrisburg, Moosic and Palmerton. At 8:35 a.m., after the courthouse opened, more than a dozen reporters sat in the hallway outside Courtroom One waiting for the doors to be opened.
“Today is a good day to stay away from the courthouse!!” another court employee wrote on her Facebook page. “News cameras everywhere,” she said, ending with the message “#restinpeacetrooper.”
The action in the courtroom was slow to begin and fairly dry when it did. When Frein entered the room around 10:05 a.m., some in the media sitting at the back of the courtroom tried to determine what color his dress shirt and suit were — those involved finally settling on pale green and charcoal gray.
“He looks more like an accountant,” one reporter commented on the tall, thin, and bespectacled Frein, who allegedly spoke of wanting to start a revolution by assassinating the troopers.
Chelak had set a number of ground rules for decorum in the court, which included a prohibition on using social media to describe the goings-on during the selection process while it is occurring. Although reporters were permitted to bring their computers, cell phones and other electronic devices inside, they were forbidden from turning them on. A deputy warned that any use of the devices during the proceedings would result in their confiscation.
“Making the world safe for Twitter,” joked a television reporter after the deputy had left earshot.
Those involved in the jury selection besides Chelak and Pike County court personnel include the county’s district attorney, Raymond J. Tonkin, and his first assistant, Bruce Desarro, and defense attorneys Michael E. Weinstein and William Ruzzo. The sides were assisted by local counsel, Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei and Deputy District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco for the prosecution, and Assistant Public Defender P.J. Redmond for the defense.
“On behalf of the court, we thank you for taking the time from your busy schedules to participate in the selection process,” Chelak told those assembled. He dismissed nine members of the panel for having hardships or conflicts — one woman said she knew the victim Dickson personally — and ordered the remainder to check with the county jury office to see whether they will be called back next week for individual questioning.
Frein, 33, of Canadensis, Monroe County, is charged with first-degree murder, murder of a law enforcement officer, attempted murder, attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, terrorism and possession of weapons of mass destruction. If he is found guilty of first-degree murder, the jury will be asked whether he should be sentenced to death, or to spend the rest of his life in state prison.