A Loyalhanna businessman on death row for 16 years is asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to hear an appeal for a new trial.
Lawyers for Kevin Murphy are challenging a ruling last month by Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio that upheld his triple homicide convictions.
Bilik-DeFazio previously found that errors made during Murphy’s 2013 trial were not significant enough to overturn the verdict.
However, Murphy’s new attorneys argue his voluntary absence from a jury visit to the crime scene was a “fatal error” that warrants a new trial.
“An immediate appeal from this court’s order would materially advance the ultimate termination of these … proceedings because Mr. Murphy would be entitled to a new trial should the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania disagree with this court’s disposition of claim one,” defense attorneys Ken Noga and Brian Aston wrote in a recent filing.
State law requires Bilik-DeFazio to allow Murphy to ask the high court to intervene while other aspects of his appeal are pending.
Last year, Murphy appealed his convictions and death sentence by claiming 22 different errors occurred during his prosecution. In a 1,300-page filing, Murphy alleged his former lawyers failed to investigate evidence that he claims points to two other men — a disgraced former police officer and a man with ties to the Mafia.
Noga and Aston maintain that if the Supreme Court sides with the defense regarding the crime scene visit, the decision would eliminate the need to litigate the remaining claims in the appeal.
Murphy has long denied killing his mother, sister and aunt at the family-owned auto glass repair shop in 2009.
Doris Murphy, 69; Kris Murphy, 43; and Edith Tietge, 81, were found dead with gunshot wounds to the back of their heads. Prosecutors argued at trial that Murphy was at odds with his family over his desire to have a married girlfriend move into the family home.