Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Orrostieta guilty in death of girlfriend
Jury convicts Kennett Square man of third-degree murder
LANCASTER>> The Kennett Square man accused of killing his Unionville High School girlfriend in her college dorm room was found guilty Monday of third-degree murder at the end of a nineday trial.
The Lancaster County Common Pleas Court jury deliberated only about one hour before returning with its verdict, which sets up a sentencing hearing later this year for defendant Gregorio Orrostieta in the death of his 18-year-old girlfriend, Karlie Hall, a freshman at Millersville University.
The verdict represents a victory for Orrostieta and his defense team, who had argued that what happened in Hall’s Bard Hall dormitory room on a night in February 2015 did not amount to an intentional homicide. The prosecution had argued that Orrostetia had strangled on-again, off-again girlfriend to death in a violent confrontation after a college party at the Lancaster County school, and should be found guilty of first-degree murder.
That verdict would have meant a life sentence for the Kennett High School graduate.
Orrostieta, 20, now faces a possible 20- to 40year term in state prison, depending on Judge Donald Totaro’s decision at a future sentencing
hearing. That proceeding will be scheduled within the next 60 days.
Members of both families were in Totaro’s small courtroom Monday when the verdict was read. Hall’s family members had earlier been tearful over the description of her death given by the lead prosecutor in the case.
The panel of 10 men and two women were excused by Totaro to begin their discussions of the evidence around noon Monday, after they listened to his legal instructions and the closing arguments of the prosecution and defense.
The prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney Susan Elizabeth Ellison, has contended that Hall died after being beaten severely and strangled in her dorm room, after she and Orrostieta got into a physical confrontation after returning home around 1:30 a.m. Feb. 8, 2015, from a party at the Lancaster County school.
The fight that ended with her death continued a pattern of violent encounters with Orrostieta, who prosecution witnesses, including Hall’s twin sister Kristin Hall, described as jealous and controlling. Ellison showed the jury panel conversations between Karlie Hall and Orrostieta on Facebook in which she accused him of giving her a black eye in an October incident.
On the defense side, Philadelphia attorney Peter C. Bowers, who represents Orrostieta, has attacked the prosecution’s version of events, saying that Hall was physically confrontational with his client on the night of her death, and had attacked him after he spilled hot soup on her. He contends she stabbed Orrostieta in the head with a pencil before falling and hitting her head.
Her death occurred sometime around 3 a.m. in her Bard Hall dorm room. Orrostieta did not call campus police until after 5 a.m., telling them his girlfriend had suffered a cardiac arrest.
The prosecution was seeking a conviction on charges of first-degree murder, which would have been punishable by life in prison without parole. The defense had suggested that he could be found guilty of a lesser charge.
The most dramatic dispute of the nine-day long trial came between forensic pathologists who testified about the cause of Hall’s death.
Dr. Wayne Ross of the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office, who conducted an autopsy of Hall following her death, showed the jurors photographs showing the extent of Hall’s injuries.
“Her face, neck and upper chest were purple, which indicated that she had been strangled,” Ross testified. “She was on her back - when she died. She was trying to defend herself as she was being beaten. She was putting her arms up as she was being struck.”
Ross said Hall died at 3 a.m., between five and 15 minutes from when the beating started.
But in response, Bowers called his own expert to rebut Ross’s conclusion. Dr. C. Peter Speth told the panel that Hall had not been strangled, but rather asphyxiated from blood that ran into her lungs after she broke open injured arteries behind her eye during a struggle with Orrostieta. The vessels had been broken in a fall that Hall had on her way home from a party on Jan. 25, 2015.
“Karlie was not strangled,” Speth said. “There were no significant blunt injuries. I cannot find any evidence of strangulation or a skull fracture.”
Speth is a controversial figure in forensic circles. He was convicted in 1997 of witness tampering in an investigation involving a man’s death in a New Jersey Prison, and had his license to practice medicine suspended.
On Monday, Ross offered brief rebuttal testimony in response to Speth’s opinion. He called them scientifically impossible, and said that if Hall had aspirated blood into her lungs, there would have been blood splattered all over the room. There was not.