Update - Judge won't dismiss charges in 'tomato patch' killing
Jason...@virgin.net
Tuesday, September 21, 1999
By Jim McKinnon, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman yesterday denied a motion to dismiss
manslaughter charges against an Elliott man who won a new trial after
being convicted of fatally shooting his 22-year-old neighbor.
Richard Beatty, 60, had been charged with homicide in the August 1994
slaying of Ryan Tait and his uncle, Robert Keller, 37, after a dispute
over Beatty's tomato garden.
Beatty, who argued his case was one of self-defense, was acquitted of
homicide in the slaying of Keller, who was portrayed during the trial as
a neighborhood bully.
But the jury convicted Beatty of manslaughter in Tait's death, and
Cashman, who presided over that earlier trial, sentenced Beatty in
October 1995 to 2 1/2 to five years on the manslaughter charge and for
having an unregistered gun.
A three-judge panel of the state Superior Court overturned Beatty's
conviction in April 1998, granting him a new trial.
Beatty's attorney, John Elash, argued in the appeal that the conviction
should be overturned because the court had erroneously allowed Tait's
character to be put on the record. Tait had been a college student at
the time.
Elash said Tait was a bystander and not a target of the lawful shooting
done in self-defense. Therefore, Tait's character should not have been
brought up.
That argument was based on a 1994 case in Easton, Northampton County,
where a man was acquitted of homicide on self-defense grounds but
convicted of related charges for wounding bystanders.
That conviction was upheld by the state Superior Court, but overturned
by the state Supreme Court on grounds that no previous law had existed
to address the issue of bystanders being harmed or killed at the time of
a justifiable homicide.
The state's high court found that if the defendant was not guilty of
homicide, then he could not be liable for the peripheral shootings.
Yesterday, Cashman rejected Elash's motion to dismiss the involuntary
manslaughter and weapons charges. But he allowed Elash to immediately
appeal that decision, believing that the attorney had raised important
questions about self-defense and gun laws that could influence the
case's outcome.
Elash said that if Tait was not threatening Beatty, then he was a
bystander and Beatty cannot be charged in connection with Tait's death.
In Beatty's trial, the jury rejected his claim that he was defending
himself against Tait's aggression.
But Elash interpreted the Supreme Court ruling to mean that even if
Beatty cannot show that Tait threatened his life, Tait had the bad luck
to get in the way of bullets meant to stop Keller.
Cashman later said that the controlling question -- whether Tait was a
bystander or an attacker -- should be determined by a fact-finding body
such as a jury or an appeals court.
District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said yesterday that the ruling
is a victory for his office, pending another appeal. He said prosecutors
will not object to the appeal being heard.
If the appeals courts agree with Elash, then the charges against Beatty
will be dismissed.
If they agree with Cashman, Beatty will get a new trial in about a year.
"He already said that Mr. Tait was an attacker," Zappala said yesterday,
referring to Beatty's taped interview with investigators. "He can't
change it now and say that Mr. Tait was a bystander."
Sometime after Beatty's appeal was filed, prosecutors, under
then-District Attorney Bob Colville, offered Beatty a deal to plead
guilty and be sentenced to time served.
Beatty turned down the offer, after serving more than two years in
prison, for a chance at acquittal.