The memory of a 1993 gruesome stabbing and drowning of a gay man in Bradford lingers, but what about the man who took the life of 24-year-old Scott Palmer?
David E. Riley Jr., now 42, is living in Erie, after his life sentence was overturned in May of 2000. He entered into a plea agreement with then-District Attorney Michele Alfieri-Causer, and was sentenced July 30, 2001 to 15 to 30 years in state prison, and given credit for eight years, 105 days of time served.
Riley had been convicted of drowning 24-year-old Scott Palmer late April 2 or early April 3, 1993. Palmer’s body was found the afternoon of April 15, 1993, in the Tunungwant Creek near Tuna Cross Road in Foster Township.
The details of the crime were shocking at a time when homosexuality was not accepted in the mainstream conscience. And when graphic violence was less prevalent in entertainment.
The prosecution, led by then-District Attorney Jeff Duke, said Riley killed Palmer, a gay man, for allegedly sexually propositioning him. A witness at trial said Riley told Palmer “this is what I do to faggots,” and slashed Palmer several times with a knife while he begged for his life and screamed for help. The witness testified that Riley was afraid people would hear Palmer’s screams, so he threw the struggling victim over the railing along the Tuna Creek flood control ramparts.
Palmer held on to the railing, but Riley stabbed him in the arm to make him let go before running down to Davis Street to make sure Palmer “was dead,” according to trial testimony.
The witness said he had taken a trip with Riley on April 14, and Riley was “laughing and joking about … a faggot he killed,” according to testimony.
Riley, represented by the late H.B. Fink at trial, had challenged his attorney’s effectiveness in a Post Conviction Relief Act motion. Riley, through attorney George Daghir, told the court he hadn’t been properly advised about a plea agreement offered before his case went to trial.
Then-President Judge John Cleland overturned Riley’s conviction, saying he wasn’t only “denied effective assistance of counsel, he was denied any assistance of counsel.”
Cleland said, “There is no evidence that Riley received even the most basic advice to assist him in making a decision which was uniquely his — whether or not to stake his life on an assessment of the strength of the commonwealth’s evidence as opposed to the strength of his defense.”
When Riley entered into the plea agreement in 2001, Alfieri-Causer said it would put him under the supervision of the state Board of Probation and Parole until he was in his 50s.
Riley was apparently released on parole sometime in 2008, when he started repaying over $2,500 in fines and costs associated with his case. According to court records, Riley is still paying on those costs, with the last payment in the docket noted on Jan. 13. An outstanding balance of $1,198.95 remains, according to the docket.
There is a record of payments made by Riley from July 18, 2008 to March 27, 2013, when the payor name is noted as the Department of Corrections, remaining the same until June 22, 2015.
It was not immediately clear if that meant Riley had been incarcerated for some reason in the two-year span in which the Department of Corrections had been paying on the bill.
