Jury selection to start in 3 nightclub slayings
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Jury selection to start in 3 nightclub slayings
Sunday, August 20, 2006
From staff and wire reports
CARLISLE - Starting tomorrow, some Cumberland County residents will get the chance to play a role in a murder trial that has become something of an international incident.
They will be chosen to sit on a jury for the trial of Miguel Padilla, an illegal Mexican immigrant charged with killing three men at an Altoona nightclub last year.
The jury will be chosen in Cumberland County due to publicity in Blair County. Cumberland officials said jury selection is expected to last several days.
The trial of Padilla, said by immigration authorities to have been in the country illegally since he was about 9, will begin in September. He could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.
The case has international ramifications because the state Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Mexican government's request to delay Padilla's trial
Tempe, Ariz., attorney Michael O'Connor, representing the Mexican government, had voiced concern that Padilla was jailed without a lawyer for seven weeks after the Aug. 28 shooting.
O'Connor did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the ruling.
Blair County officials have said they waited to appoint an attorney only because they thought Mexican officials wanted input on the selection. When they learned that Mexican officials merely wanted to make sure that Padilla had an attorney, they appointed a public defender, they said.
Padilla is accused of killing club owner Alfred Mignogna, 61; bouncer Fred Rickabaugh Sr., 58; and patron Stephen Heiss, 28, outside the United Veterans Association Club in Altoona.
Padilla's public defender, Donald Speice, said he is prepared for trial. Speice has denied the Mexican government's allegations that Padilla has not been represented properly.
One year later: Long legal battle likely in Padilla case
http://www.altoonamirror.com/News/artic ... cleID=4292
One year later: Long legal battle likely in Padilla case
n For the Record: To view documents from the Miguel Padilla case, click here.
http://www.altoonamirror.com/ForTheReco ... lla008.pdf
http://www.altoonamirror.com/ForTheReco ... adilla.pdf
By Kay Stephens, kstephens@altoonamirror.com
A year ago Monday, in the early morning hours outside an Altoona social club, three men were shot and killed.
A year from now, if accused gunman Miguel Padilla is convicted at the end of a jury trial scheduled to start next week in Hollidaysburg, the case likely will move into a lengthy appeal process, especially if the jury chooses death over life in prison.
“When it’s a capital case ... the Mexican government will do what they can to appeal,” said Kent Scheidegger, director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif. “The Mexican government is very anti-capital punishment. I can’t say the same for the Mexican people.”
Scheidegger’s organization tracks and offers comments on court cases, many involving international issues on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In one murder case involving a Mexican national, the legal process began with a conviction and a death sentence, followed by an appeal process that stretched over 12 years to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ernesto Medellin was born in Mexico but grew up in Texas. In 1993, he and two others were accused of raping and strangling two girls outside Houston.
Padilla, 26, is accused of gunning down United Veterans Association owner Alfred Mignogna, employee Fredrick Rickabaugh Sr. and club patron Stephen M. Heiss.
Like Medellin, Padilla was born in Mexico and came with his family to the United States. Padilla grew up in Cambria County and graduated from Penn Cambria High School.
Because Padilla is a Mexican national, his case has drawn interest and protests from the Mexican government, which sought to halt the trial while awaiting a review of legal issues before the state Supreme Court.
Mexico’s representatives complained that Padilla was not provided legal representation immediately, was not permitted to attend status conferences and has not been given enough money to pay expert witnesses.
Blair County Judge Hiram Carpenter says those and other international legal issues will be debated during appeal of any conviction.
Scheidegger said he believes Mexico loses more appeal issues than it wins, but it generally files appeals in capital cases, and the process is slow.
“These appeal cases could be done in five or six years, and they are in Virginia, particularly in those cases where there is no question of guilt,” he said.
In other states where issues go back and forth between state and federal courts, the process languishes.
In the Medellin case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence. Medellin still is on death row. Scheidegger said some legal issues remain with the Texas state court.
The appeal issues in the Medellin case included a claim that Houston authorities didn’t tell him that he had the right to notify the Mexican government of his arrest.
The Mexican consulate learned of Medellin’s status when he wrote to them from death row.
That appeal was dismissed partly because the courts ruled that the failure to notify had no effect on Medellin’s conviction or sentence.
In Padilla’s case, the Mexican consulate in Philadelphia is aware of Padilla’s charges.
But they have no role in the county jury trial, Carpenter has ruled.
Another related post-trial issue likely to surface in the Padilla case, if the jury sentences him to die, is Pennsylvania’s death row roster.
The state has 223 men and women on death row, including some that have been there for more than 20 years. Because of the appeal process, the state has not executed an inmate since 1999.
It has executed only three people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978.
Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 946-7456.