The attorney for the two women convicted of perjury last month
believes the jury was tainted when former McKean County District
Attorney Michele Alfieri “blurted out” that Becky Lucrezi Olson
passed a polygraph test.
West Chester attorney Sam Stretton, who represents Marian Kay
Nersinger and Michele Nelson, both from New York state, filed a
motion claiming his clients should receive a new trial due to
Alfieri’s testimony.
Alfieri’s testimony was in response to immunity she granted
Lucrezi Olson during the trial for convicted cop-killer Timothy
Williams. Lucrezi Olson was in a car driven by Williams when the
car was stopped by Kane Borough Police Officer Steve Jerman. Gun
shots rang out, leaving Jerman dead and Williams critically injured
in 1999.
Stretton had asked for a mistrial last month in the
Nersinger/Nelson trial when Alfieri “for no reason other than to
pollute the trial” said Lucrezi Olson passed a polygraph test, but
that motion was denied. He’s now asking McKean County Judge John
Yoder to reconsider.
“This Court gave a curative instruction that was not enough
since the entire case was based on whether Lucrezi (Olson) was
truthful or not,” Stretton wrote. “The polygraph examination
tainted the verdict.”
Stretton also said that his private investigator, Anthony
Marceca, saw and heard Alfieri “celebrating and yelling that she
got in the polygraph … this again goes to show that this was
intentional misconduct.”
He also claims that the Superior Court justices looking at the
Timothy Williams case should not consider Nersinger’s and Nelson’s
convictions since the cases are not related.
Nersinger and Nelson were charged with perjury after testifying
in a Post Conviction Relief Act hearing for Williams after several
people, including Nelson and Nersinger, came forward, claiming to
have heard Lucrezi Olson admit to shooting Jerman in 1999.
After both were convicted of perjury, a third-degree felony,
District Attorney John Pavlock filed a motion to reopen the
Williams’ case to allow the admissions of the perjury convictions,
arguing that the convictions were relevant to the Williams
case.
However, Stretton, who also represents Williams, claims that
earlier, when he filed a motion to dismiss the perjury charges
based on collateral estoppel – when a court has decided an issue
necessary to its judgment, that decision may preclude re-litigation
of the issue in a suit on a different cause of action involving a
party to the first case.
The court “based its finding on the position of the Commonwealth
that these cases were not connected and collateral estoppel should
not apply,” Stretton wrote.
“In fact, this Honorable Court … notes that the Nersinger case
is entirely separate and distinct from the Williams case and the
Court was not bound by Judge (Charles) Alexander’s determination,”
Stretton said, referring to Alexander, the Clarion County judge who
presided over the Williams case.
However, as Stretton sees it, the Commonwealth has taken the
opposite approach.
“The Commonwealth, having taken a different position now than
they did during the argument on the collateral estoppel issue, has
in essence admitted these cases are similar,” Stretton said. “That
being the fact, this Honorable Court should reconsider its denial
of the collateral estoppel and find correctly that collateral
estoppel does apply and that the jury verdict should be reversed
because of the findings by Judge Alexander that Becky Lucrezi
actually made the statements that she shot (Jerman), thereby
defeating the element of perjury that the statements be false.”
Pavlock argued in his motion that although Alexander found that
Lucrezi Olson statements were hearsay and could only be used for
impeachment purposes.
“The fact that the Commonwealth has now taken a contrary
position is a most serious matter and should cause this Honorable
Court to reconsider its position,” Stretton said in response.
Stretton, on Williams’s behalf, asked for the court to reverse
the perjury convictions “on the basis of collateral estoppel and
the inconsistent positions now take by the Commonwealth.”
In a separate motion, Stretton claimed that both Nersinger and
Nelson are indigent and could not pay for their filing fees or
transcripts of their trial.
A hearing has been scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday; Nersinger and
Nelson are scheduled to be sentenced that day, too.
Wednesday’s hearing will also include testimony from people who
allegedly heard jurors talk with Trooper Gary Stuckey when jurors
came back into the courtroom to ask a question after they had been
in deliberations.
