NORWICH – After three and a half hours of deliberations, the eight-woman, four-man jury in the Peter M. Wlasiuk murder trial elected to sleep on their decision Thursday night before resuming deliberations early Friday morning.
Following three hours and 45 minutes of closing statements from Defense Attorney Randel Scharf and District Attorney Joseph A. McBride Thursday, the jury left the courtroom to begin its deliberations at 1:45 p.m. Jurors went home around 5:30 p.m. and returned at 8:15 this morning.
Peter Wlasiuk, charged with second degree murder, was 33 at the time of his original arrest and conviction in 2002. He was sentenced to the maximum, 25 years in prison to life, for allegedly smothering his wife Patricia at their Oxford home and then transporting the body to Guilford Lake, where police believe he staged an accident to cover it up.
Wlasiuk, now 39, spent six years in the state prison at Attica before the New York State Appellate Division declared he did not receive a fair trial, citing a number of procedural and conduct errors on the part of the court and district attorney’s office. His case was returned to Chenango County in August, 2006.
Wlasiuk’s original jury deliberated for four hours and 19 minutes before reaching a verdict of guilty in November, 2002.
Scharf gave his closing arguments first Thursday, attacking the methodology of the prosecution’s case and indicating corruption on the part of police investigators.
“They are selecting what they want you to see. They’re cherry picking the truth, their truth,” said Scharf.
Scharf reminded the jury that he, not the prosecution, presented several pieces of the people’s evidence to the jury, including the alleged “murder bush,” the burdock plant where Patricia was allegedly killed.
“You’d think the prosecution would show you the evidence, not me. It’s their evidence. It was never even opened at the first trial,” said Scharf, referring to the evidence bag containing the burdocks bush where Patricia’s hair was found.
Scharf said Sheriff’s investigators purposefully lied to County Court Judge W. Howard Sullivan when they applied for a warrant to search Wlasiuk’s Oxford property on April 8, 2002. Sheriff’s deputies seized evidence not included in their original search warrant and neglected to mention them before applying for a second warrant seeking items they already had, Scharf said.
“These guys went up there pretending ‘they forgot’ and asked to search the house for burdocks after they had already taken them into evidence. But the whole time they were up in front of the judge, they were holding the bush right behind their backs,” said Scharf.
“A cop that’ll lie to a judge in a court of law, under oath, saying they made a mistake and knowing it wasn’t, is the same kind of person who’d sit in front of a jury and say ‘I forgot,’” said Scharf.
McBride began his closing arguments with this, “ ‘It would be easy to kill someone and put them into Guilford Lake and make it look like an accident’ ... That’s what the defendant said one year before he did it to Patty.”
McBride went on to say, “Is this some part of a grand conspiracy? No. Just concerned citizens coming forward with what they know. It’s not a big conspiracy; it’s our community coming together to ensure justice is served.”
McBride utilized an overhead projector in his closing to the jury, showing pictures from the scene on the night of the alleged murder, the victim’s autopsy photos and lastly a note written to police allegedly from Wlasiuk while he was in jail that read:
“Detective Lloyd and Sheriff Tom I need to talk to you guys. There is evidence I purposely hid and withheld from you if my lawyer wants to be there he can but I will talk to you myself. Please let me know.” The letter was not signed and had no punctuation.
“If they were hampered at all that night, they were hampered by the defendant,” McBride said, referring to the police and emergency personnel.
McBride said Wlasiuk set up the whole incident, misleading emergency personnel on the scene. “They’re all there trying to save a life, Patricia’s life,” said McBride, who dismissed minor inconsistencies in some witnesses’ testimonies.
In his last words to the jury, McBride told them that they were the last link in a long chain that bound justice, noting an ancient Latin phrase etched above the judge’s bench in the courtroom: Fiat justitia ruat coelum, “Let justice be done even though the heavens may fall,” he said.