A Harrison nurse charged with killing two nursing home residents and attempting to kill 17 others by deliberately giving them lethal doses of insulin indicated her wish to plead guilty during a short court appearance Friday.
Heather Pressdee, 41, appeared to be frustrated with her defense attorneys when they asked Butler County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Kubit for a 90-day postponement during a status conference for the case.
“I want to sign and be done,” Pressdee said to her lawyers, shaking her head. Her remarks were loud enough to be overheard.
Later, she said to defense attorneys Phil DiLucente and James DePasquale, “You guys aren’t helping me. I keep trying to talk to you, and you’re not helping me.”
DiLucente responded: “The judge won’t accept any kind of plea until we have everything.”
Pressdee, who is being held at Butler County Prison, is charged with nearly five dozen counts that she administered lethal doses of insulin to numerous patients at five care facilities between 2020 and 2023.
Investigators have identified a total of 22 victims. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, which investigated the case and is prosecuting it, said that in total 17 patients died who had been cared for by Pressdee at nursing homes and rehabilitation centers in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Westmoreland counties.
She is charged with first-degree murder for two of those patients and 17 counts of attempted murder.
Pressdee was arrested in May on charges involving three of her patients. In November, the Attorney General’s Office announced charges involving 19 more.
Although prosecutors said early on that the death penalty was being considered, they did not file the required notice prior to her formal arraignment.
During the status conference Friday morning, Pressdee, dressed in an orange jail uniform with her hair up in a bun, sat between her defense attorneys.
There was a private discussion with the judge for a few minutes before they announced on the record that they were seeking a 90-day postponement.
DiLucente told the court that the Attorney General’s Office is still providing them with discovery materials, and that the defense wants to ensure Pressdee has enough time to review them.
To that, Pressdee said, “I reviewed enough of it.”
After the hearing, DePasquale said the prosecution told him they’ll have the rest of the state’s evidence next week.
“You can’t make an informed decision until you review all your discovery,” he said.
In Pressdee’s cases, DePasquale said, they are primarily dealing with voluminous medical records.
Bruce Antkowiak, a law professor and former federal prosecutor, said a defendant is permitted to plead guilty to a crime even over vociferous objections from their attorneys.
But those attorneys still have to advise their client properly.
“What you see here is the attorneys want to make sure they are giving her their best advice before she decides what she wants to do,” he said. “Then she can do whatever she wishes.”
What the defense doesn’t want, Antkowiak said, is for Pressdee to rush into a plea and then come back a year later and say, “ ‘Had I known X, I wouldn’t have taken that deal.’ ”
That could be particularly important if any plea that Pressdee takes does not have a negotiated sentence.
If the defense doesn’t know all of the evidence, the prosecution could present that information at sentencing.
“It may be something devastating to your plea to leniency,” Antkowiak said. “You have to understand that going in and be prepared for it.”
He called the defense attorneys’ actions sensible.
“But at the end of the day, they’re not going to be able to stop their client from taking whatever plea she wants to take.”
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2019 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.