The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office on Monday said it would no longer seek the death penalty for a man charged in a Pittsburgh triple killing.
Ronald Steave, 32, had been facing the possibility of capital punishment if found guilty of killing his ex-girlfriend Nandi Fitzgerald, 28; her son, Denzel “Buddy” Nowlin Jr., 12; and her friend, Tatiana “Tay” Hill, 28, on New Year’s Eve 2021. Steave had a different child with Fitzgerald.
Jury selection was completed Tuesday in Allegheny County Commons Pleas Court. The trial is set to start Nov. 1.
Before the prosecution’s made its formal withdrawal, Steave and his lawyers had been fighting to take capital punishment off the table, but to no avail.
The DA’s office announced in May 2022 its intention to seek the death penalty.
Earlier Monday, attorneys Frank Walker and Michael Machen, who represent Steave, failed to convince Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski that the death penalty should be barred in the case because of what say is their client’s intellectual disability.
The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office in 2022 had pointed to seven factors prosecutors believe warrant putting Steave to death.
Under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case, it is unconstitutional to sentence to death a person with an intellectual disability.
Borkowski cited a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that he said tasks the jury with evaluating any potential intellectual disability during the sentencing phase after a verdict.
Attorneys on both sides Monday advocated for a trial delay, with prosecutors arguing they needed more time to evaluate experts weighing in on Steave’s alleged disability.
Borkowski declined to postpone. The district attorney’s office pulled the death-penalty option hours later.
Walker and Machen declined to comment after a brief hearing Monday afternoon.
Steave’s case began when police were called to a rowhouse on Hamilton Avenue in the city’s Homewood section around 4 a.m. on Dec. 31, 2021, after neighbors reported hearing gunfire.
Officers found Fitzgerald dead just inside the front door. Her son appeared to have been hiding behind a door. Hill was under a bed.