From the June 24th edition:
"County officials blame each other for Hugo file not reaching state court" BY EDWARD LEWIS, STAFF WRITER, 6/24/2006
WILKES-BARRE — A Luzerne County judge, the district attorney and clerk of courts are blaming one another for failing to send the case file on Hugo Selenski’s prison escape to Superior Court.
District Attorney David Lupas is challenging a Feb. 15 ruling by Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. that dismissed charges against the accused murderer, stemming from his daring October 2003 escape from Luzerne County Correctional Facility.
Lupas filed a motion Wednesday accusing Olszewski of being derelict of his duties for not sending the court record on the escape charges to Superior Court.
The judge is required to ensure all records on the escape charges reach the Superior Court, Lupas said in his motion. Those records should have been sent within 40 days of his Feb. 16 appeal, Lupas said.
“It’s way past that,” Lupas said Friday. “All we want is the appeal to be heard regarding the escape.”
Clerk of Courts Bob Reilly disagreed Friday with Lupas’ account of what happened. Reilly believes the delay in sending the escape file was due to a problem with the court transcript from the Feb. 15 hearing when Olszewski dismissed the charges. The transcript arrived in the clerk of courts office Thursday morning and was immediately sent to the Superior Court, Reilly said.
The county stenographer’s office was not aware Lupas filed his Feb. 16 appeal to reinstate the escape charges, Reilly said. The lack of notice held up the transcript, he said.
“Nobody served the stenographers’ office with a notice of appeal. To the best of my knowledge, that’s what happened,” Reilly said. “It’s not our job to notify them.”
When asked about Reilly’s account of what happened, Olszewski said, “That’s an accurate statement by Mr. Reilly.”
The judge declined to comment further because the case is ongoing.
Lupas disputed Reilly’s comments.
“Maybe Mr. Reilly should look at his files before he speaks,” Lupas said.
The district attorney insists his office made an official request to the county stenographers’ office to transcribe the Feb. 14 hearing.
To prove his point, Lupas displayed an order and proof of service — both public documents stored in the clerk of courts office — that indicated the order was hand delivered to the stenographers’ office Feb. 16, one day after Lupas filed the appeal.
“We followed all the steps we had to,” Lupas said.
Early Wednesday, the Superior Court notified Olszewski it had not received the Feb. 14 transcript. Later the same day, Lupas filed the motion asking the higher court to compel Olszewski to send the transcript.
Olszewski said prosecutors failed to bring Selenski, 32, to trial on time for the Oct. 10, 2003, escape. State law mandates defendants must be brought to trial within one year of their arrest.
Less than 24 hours after Olszewski’s ruling, Lupas filed an appeal in Superior Court, claiming Selenski’s escape and double-homicide cases were consolidated for trial by President Judge Michael T. Conahan in late October 2003. A jury cleared Selenski on the two homicide charges March 15.
But that trial was delayed because of an unrelated appeal. Court records related to Selenski’s homicide case during the unrelated appeal process also contained Selenski’s escape case.
The appeal caused any trial on the escape charges to exceed the one-year requirement.
Reilly admitted his office needed time to separate the escape files from the homicide files because numerous court records contained the two crimes.
“In this particular case, we had to review files and take out what was unrelated to the escape case,” Reilly said. “With the few workers I have, that took time.”
MY COMMENTS: Wow, Lupas really does NOT play well with others! Yikes... With it being almost three years since the escape, I think it's time to give it up already! And when will the next trial start? I thought, as a US citizen, everyone is entitled to a fair and speedy trial. Here we go, the 6th amendment of our Bill of Rights: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."
CHEW ON THAT...
Now I just have to wait for the law exam results... 
!
I got her a portable DVD player; she'd be mad if she found out how much I spent on it. I knew how much she'd love it for work, so the price didn't matter to me. I picked one that had a nice-sized screen from a quality brand so I'm happy and I'm glad that she's happy with it.
That's a sweet line!
