Judge to decide if suspect’s interview allowed as evidence
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
An Allegheny County judge held an hours-long hearing Tuesday to decide whether recorded statements made to police by a suspect in the slaying of five people and an unborn child in Wilkinsburg ought to be allowed as evidence at trial.
Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman did not rule on the defense’s motion to suppress the interview that Robert Thomas, 29, gave to Allegheny County Police in April 2016. The judge instead asked both sides to submit briefs summarizing their positions within 30 days of receiving a transcript of the contested interview. He is expected to make a decision after reviewing those briefs.
Thomas and Cheron Shelton, 30, are both charged with killing five adults, including a pregnant woman, during a cookout in Wilkinsburg on March 9, 2016. Three other people were shot but survived.
Investigators believe Thomas fired 18 rounds from a handgun to herd the group toward the porch of a house on Franklin Avenue while Shelton fired 30 rounds with an assault-style rifle from a nearby spot, trapping the victims.
Shelton and Thomas appeared in court Tuesday, but the day’s hearing revolved around Thomas’ interview with police after he was arrested April 5, 2016, on unrelated drug and weapons charges.
Those charges had initially been filed in 2013 against Shelton, Thomas and a third man but were dropped later that year. As the investigation of the Wilkinsburg shooting was ongoing in April 2016, police refiled the 2013 drug and weapons charges against all three men.
Defense attorneys immediately objected, arguing that the refiled charges were a pretext to take Shelton and Thomas into custody because they had been identified as suspects in the shootings.
InJune, Judge Cashman dismissed the drug and weapons charges against the men, citing a rule that requires a defendant to be tried within 180 days if in custody or 365 days if not.
Thomas’ attorney, Casey White, argued in a motion that because the April 5 arrest violated his client’s constitutional rights, any interviews or evidence gathered from that arrest should be suppressed in the homicide trial, even though detectives informed Thomas of his Miranda rights.
Exactly what Thomas said in that interview was not clear on Tuesday because Judge Cashman allowed prosecutors and defense attorneys to watch a tape of the contested interview, which lasted about an hour, in his chambers, away from the public.
According to testimony at a 2016 preliminary hearing, Thomas allegedly admitted to police that he was one of two men seen in surveillance footage at a home on Nolan Court in Homewood after the shootings. It’s not clear whether he admitted that during the April 6, 2016, interview or at another time.
Detectives said during the preliminary hearing that they tracked a vehicle used in the shootings to Shelton’s mother’s home on Nolan Court using video surveillance. Before the shootings, a man investigators believe to be Shelton was seen entering the home and leaving with a long object, believed to be the rifle used in the slayings.
After the shootings, the vehicle returned to the home on Nolan Court, and Shelton and Thomas were seen entering it, police said.
Three Allegheny County Police detectives testified during the suppression hearing about when Thomas became a suspect in the slayings, when the 2013 case was reopened and what steps investigators took in that case before arresting Thomas in April 2016.
A trial date was set for March 12. problems, including nausea, cramps, diarrhea and headaches, especially affecting people with compromised immune systems, the elderly and infants.
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