‘I WANT MY TIME BACK’
Long, sad tale of David Munchinski, cleared of double murder, ends in death and $8M payout
Wracked by advanced Parkinson’s disease, 69-year-old David Munchinski testified in late Februaryin a federal lawsuit he’d brought nearly a decade before against the law officers he said robbed him of 26 years of his life.
His lawyer, Noah Geary, asked himwhat he wanted out of his suit.
“I want my time back,” he said in avideo deposition.
But time had finally run out on DavidMunchinski: He testified Feb. 21 and Feb. 22 and died within hours ofthat second session.
Now his family will receive a settlement for $8.75 million from Fayette County and the Pennsylvania State Police, compensation for the conviction that kept Munchinski in prison from 1986 to 2011 for a crime thattwo federal courts concluded he didnot commit.
The settlement marks the final chapter in a sorrowful drama that started in 1977 with a double murder at a remote Fayette County cabin and consumed Munchinski until his last days.
“I’m innocent,” he said in that deposition. “I was innocent then
andI’m innocent now.”
Mr. Geary said his client wanted to go to trial. But he died before lawyers for the defendants could crossexaminehim.
That meant the deposition couldn’t be used at trial, so Mr. Geary said he was forced to work out a settlement. He blamed the defendants’ lawyers for dragging out the case with numerous appeals and the fact that the deposition was delayeduntil February.
“He never got his day in court,” Mr.Geary said.
Payment of the settlement will be split between Fayette County, which will pay $3 million, and state police. Beyond the money, Mr.
Geary insisted on a formal apology fromFayette County.
Two former prosecutors from the district attorney’s office, Gerald Solomon and Ralph Warman, put Mr. Munchinski on trial and were defendants in the civil case. Both went on to become judges and are now retired. The other defendant is the estate of the late George Fayock, a state police sergeant who oversaw the investigation.
Fayette County must issue the apology within 30 days of the settlement, but the parties will have to hash out the details. U.S. Magistrate Judge Maureen Kelly is refereeing that process.
Munchinski’s daughter in Florida, Raina Kousaleos, didn’t want to discuss her father’s ordeal, but Mr. Geary said an apology would be meaningful to her. It would be the first time anyone has said they were sorry for what happened to Munchinski.
“It was important to David and Raina that they [Solomon and Warman] acknowledge what they did,” Mr.Geary said.
Mr. Munchinski won his freedom in 2011 after a federal magistrate judge, Lisa Pupo Lenihan, voided his conviction on grounds that Mr. Solomon and Mr. Warman hid evidence that could have cleared him, particularly a series of contradictory statements from a now-dead witness who said he’d seen the murders but later said he wasin Oklahoma at the time.
Mr. Munchinski filed his suit two years after that and had been living in Florida with his daughter. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2003 while still in prison, so his life in Florida was somewhat limited.
“He never really got to enjoy his freedom,”Mr. Geary said.
Mr. Munchinski was convicted in 1986 along with Leon Scaglione in the killings of Raymond Gierke and James Alford at a cabin in Bear Rocks,Fayette County.
Statetroopers had no physical evidence linking Mr. Munchinski to themurders.
The case was built almost entirely on the story of a single witness, Richard Bowen, a burglar and forger who came forward in the early 1980s to say he’d witnessed the rapes and murders of the men. But hechanged his story repeatedly.
Judge Lenihan ruled that the
prosecutors and police had withheld exculpatory evidence at two trials, including a leniency deal worked out forBowen in his own case.
After Judge Lenihan’s decision, the state appealed to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But that court upheld Judge Lenihan, describing the prosecution’s violations as “staggering” and questioning why the state hadappealed.
That question has never been adequately answered, Mr.Geary said.
The case began on Dec. 2, 1977, with the deaths of Gierke and Alford at a cabin owned by Gierke in remote Bear Rocks, not far from Seven Springs. Both had been shot multiple times. Gierke’s body was found in the cabin. Alford had managed to make it to a neighbor’shouse before dying.
Trooper Montgomery Goodwin, who would later end up in prison himself for a 1987 murder, led the investigation. He and other troopers developed several suspects but didn’t have enough evidence for arrests.
Munchinskiand Scaglione were well known to police. In 1978, they had been charged together in the abduction of two women at knifepoint in Greensburg. Munchinski had also been charged that year with stabbing a Derry man in an assault that also involvedScaglione.
In 1979, Munchinski pleaded guilty to those incidents as well as to pulling a gun on a man in Greensburg bar in 1976 and was sentenced 2½ years in prison.
The double murder investigation, meanwhile, went nowhere for five years until Bowenentered the picture.
A convicted burglar and forger incarcerated in Greensburg, he contacted the troopers in the early 1980s claiming knowledge of the murders. He initially only implicated Scaglione. And he said he didn’t actually enter the cabin, so did not directly witness the killings.
But his story changed. He later said he was a direct witness and that Scaglione and Munchinski killed the men ina drug dispute.
Policecharged the two with murder in October 1982 and they went to trial together the following year. Bowen was the main witness. He said Scaglione raped Gierke and Munchinski raped Alford beforekilling them.
That story didn’t match what he’d told the troopers initially, nor did it match other facts revealed at trial. One example is the car used to get to the cabin. Bowen said he drove Scaglione and Munchinski to the scene in a
lime green Gran Torino owned by Scaglione. But records showed Scaglione didn’t buy that car until six monthsafter the killings.
The state also presented two other witnesses, Lori Lexa and her friend Deborah Dahlmann, who said Munchinski and Scaglione admitted the murders to them ina 1978 bar conversation. But Dahlmann’s ex-husband, Ed Wiltrout,was a prime suspect. Munchinski and his lawyer didn’t know it, but a witness had told police that Wiltrout wasone of the killers.
The prosecution never produced the report containing that statement, so Munchinski’s lawyer was unable to cross-examine Dahlmann. The trial ended witha hung jury.
The state took Scaglione to trial separately in 1986. He admitted to committing the murdersbut said Munchinski had no involvement. He said his partner was another man who looked like Munchinski. Thejury convicted Scaglione.
Then the state retried Munchinski. The prosecutors, Warman and Solomon, again relied on testimony from Bowen, Lexa and Dahlmann. This time, they also included testimony from Bernard Furr, a friend of Dahlmann’s, who said Munchinski confessed in 1978, and Harold Thomas, who said Muchinski confessed to him in a jailhouse conversation in 1983.
Muchinski tried to use Scaglione’s testimony exonerating him. But Scaglione invoked his right against selfincrimination, so Munchinski asked the judge to grant
him immunity. The judge refused and also ruled that Scaglione’s prior testimony wasinadmissible.
During his closing arguments,Mr. Warman asked the jurors if they’d heard testimony about Bowen receiving any deals for his testimony other than immunity and told themthere were none.
But that, according to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, wasa lie.
The prosecutors had made a deal in which Westmoreland County would treat him with leniency in his parole revocation hearings in exchange for his testimony againstMunchinski.
Warman and Solomon were required to turn over thatagreement to the defense. Butthey didn’t.
The jury convicted Munchinski. In 1987, he was sentenced to life.
In 1991, the state’s case began to unravel. Bowen, in prison in Oklahoma, contacted the FBI and recanted his trial testimony, saying he wasn’t involved “in any fashion” with Scaglione and Munchinskiin the killings.
Muchinski’s lawyers then deposed Bowen, who said he lied about the murders and wasn’t even in the state when the men were killed. He said state police and the prosecutors had threatened to pin the shootingson him.
He said Trooper Goodwin had coached him on what to say. He said Goodwin changed the first account, when Bowen said he’d remained in the car, to a later account in which Bowen said he’d seen the murders througha window.
Bowen also said Solomon had told him that “we need to put somebody there” to say he’d seen the murders. He said he knew so many facts about the crime because Goodwin had shown him photos, took him to the scene and provided details about theGran Torino.
With this new evidence, Munchinski in 1992 filed his first post-conviction relief act petition, one of several he wouldfile over the years.
A Fayette County judge, William Franks, ordered the state to produce all the police files so he could review them. But, as was later proven, the prosecution didn’t turn over everything. Bowen also recanted his deposition testimony and reaffirmed what he’d said at trial. He later hangedhimself in jail.
Munchinski presented testimony from Bowen’s nephew, Kenneth Knight, who said Bowen admitted that he was in Oklahoma at the time of the murders. The judge, however, dismissed Munchinski’s petition; he appealedand lost.
That pattern would repeat itself over the years in state andfederal courts.
But in Muchinski’s third petition, in 2001, he gained traction by presenting a collection of what are called Brady violations. Under the law, prosecutors have to turn over evidence that might help a defendant. Munchinski said Warman, Solomon and another prosecutor, John Kopas, deliberately suppressed numerous pieces of exculpatoryinformation. Amongthose were:
• A 1982 report from
Trooper Goodwin that Warman, with Solomon’s approval, edited to remove a reference to a recorded statementby Bowen.
• The leniency agreement forBowen.
• An autopsy report showing semen recovered from Alford came from a man with blood type A. Munchinski’s bloodtype was B.
• A witness statement from 1978 indicating Bowen had left for Oklahoma on Dec. 1, theday before the murders.
•A report by Trooper Goodwin recounting the opinion from a deputy coroner that Alford’s anal intercourse happened 24 hours before his death, contradicting Bowen’s storyabout the rapes.
• A 1980 witness statement implicating Ed Wiltrout, exhusband of Dahlmann, a state witness.
• A 1977 report regarding the timing of emergency dispatch calls that didn’t match upwith Bowen’s account.
• A 1986 witness report that implicated Scaglione and two othermen.
Judge Barry Feudale, a visiting judge brought in from another county, determined that Warman, Solomon and Kopas, who hadn’t turned over all the police files in Munchinski’s first petition, had all committed prosecutorial misconduct. Judge Franks, the judge in the first petition, also testified, saying if he’d had all the material that Judge Feudale had, he might well have granted Munchinski’spetition.
In the end, Judge Feudale ordered prosecutors to produce Bowen’s tape-recorded statement in 10 days or he would release Munchinski. The prosecution said there was no tape, and Warman admitted that he had altered Goodwin’s report to remove references to it.
In a 2004 interview from prison, where he was serving time for shooting a man he caught dancing with his wife, Goodwin said Warman had changed his report without his knowledge and was now trying to make him a scapegoat.
Judge Feudale ripped all three prosecutors in his opinion, saying their actions “ill served the victims, their families, the defendant and the citizensof Fayette County.”
He granted Munchinski’s petition, but the state again appealed and won a reversal fromthe state Superior Court.
Munchinski turned once again to the federal courts and in 2007 filed a second habeas petition, which eventually led to Judge Lenihan’s decision to release him in 2011. He walked out of the state prison in Pittsburgh on Sept.30 and went to Florida.
In an interview with the Post-Gazette at that time, he said he was “having a great time” being free after so many years. He expressed astonishment at some of the developments that had passed him by in 25 years behind bars, such as cellphones, automatic coffeemakers and the internet.
“Telephones,” he said. “They’re amazing, aren’t they?”
His daughter said he was delighted to be able to go wherehe wanted.
“Just to see the joy in him when he has the ability to do all of this stuff for himself,” she said, “it has been a very exciting time for all of us.”
At the time, Mr. Geary said Munchinski had unusual intelligence and could havebeen a lawyer.
“He is the most relentless person I have ever met in any endeavor,”he said.
Other news accounts at the time were less complimentary, uncovering an unsavory past as recounted in prison and court records of heroin and cocaine use at a young age, suicide attempts, drug dealing, assaults, arrests and the1970s prison term.
Still, the federal courts had made it clear that prosecutors had wronged Mr. Munchinski in the Bear Rocks case, and he promised to bring a federal civil rights againstthem.
“There are some loose ends left to be tied up,” he said. “I hope that the courts takea good, long look at it and givean honest opinion.”
The state, meanwhile, had once again appealed, and this time lost.
In 2012, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Lenihan, saying Mr. Munchinski has “clearly and convincingly demonstrated that but for the Commonwealth’s Brady violations, no reasonable juror could rationally believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Munchinski committed the Bear Rocksmurders.”
The appellate judges also said Munchinski’s evidence showed that the murders “could not have happened as the Commonwealth proposed at trial.”
Finally, they took the unusual step of questioning why the state was appealing at all.
“It seems that the Commonwealth’s decision to appeal the District Court’s judgment may have been motivated by considerations external to this particular case,” they wrote, “because it is difficult to discern any significant justification on this record for continuing to defend what is now acknowledged by all to be a badly tainted and highly suspect conviction.”
The following year, Munchinskimade good on his promiseand filed his lawsuit.