Frank R. Chester, who’s convicted of the grisly murder of Anthony V. Milano almost 30 years ago, is continuing his quest for freedom.
Last week, Chester asked the entire Third Circuit Court of Appeals to consider voiding his convictions in the Milano case.
Last month, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected Chester’s request to void his convictions. But Chester wants all 13 judges on the court to review the panel’s decision.
In December 1987, Chester and Richard R. Laird escorted Milano out of a Bucks County tavern and kidnapped him to a nearby wooded area. Upon their arrival, Chester kicked and pushed Milano. Then Laird hacked out Milano’s throat with a box cutter, according to court records.
Milano was gay, and prosecutors called it an antigay hate crime, though there were no hate-crime protections in place for the LGBT community.
In 1988, Chester and Laird were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
But Chester’s first-degree murder conviction was voided in 2011, due to improper jury instructions by the trial judge.
Chester wants his remaining convictions voided — including second-degree murder and kidnapping charges — on the basis that his trial attorney had a conflict of interest.
Chester’s trial attorney, Thomas F. Edwards Jr., denies having had a conflict of interest in the case.
The conflict-of-interest claim stems from a pending DUI charge against Edwards in Bucks County, at the time of Chester’s 1988 trial.
In a 15-page brief filed Feb. 6, Chester’s attorneys argue that it’s in the public interest for the entire Third Circuit Court of Appeals to consider his claim.
“Conflicts of interest among defense counsel in criminal cases occur with some frequency,” the brief states. “It is of exceptional importance, particularly in a capital case, that the standards for proving them be clear and consistent. Review by the full court will advance this goal.”
The brief contends that the three-judge panel placed too high of a burden on Chester to prove that Edwards labored under a conflict of interest.
The panel unreasonably expected Chester to prove that the outcome of his 1988 trial would have been different if Edwards didn’t have the alleged conflict of interest, according to the brief.
But the law only requires Chester to prove that Edwards’ alleged conflict of interest adversely affected his performance, the brief contends.
“[Edwards] would have had to have been superhuman for these conflicting interests not to have affected his performance,” the brief notes. “He was facing the prospect of jail, his wife could no longer eat and faced imminent death, the IRS and bank wanted his house, his post-traumatic stress syndrome flared up, clients were suing him left and right — all during Chester’s capital trial.”
The brief also contends that Edwards admitted being affected by his pending DUI charge and other personal problems.
“Edwards selected pro-death [penalty] jurors, had done no mitigation investigation, failed to impeach the only eyewitness with his lengthy record of criminal convictions for crimes of dishonesty, never explained to the jury why Chester’s testimony established a mental state supporting a conviction less than both first- and second-degree murder and failed to pursue the mitigating circumstance that Chester had no prior criminal record.”
Additionally, the brief expresses understanding that judges are reluctant to delve into the personal lives of trial attorneys.
“We appreciate judicial resistance to post-trial explorations of the personal lives of trial lawyers,” the brief concludes. “Here, however, in a capital case, Chester’s lawyer suffered the perfect storm of conflicting interests, and Chester was denied the services of a conflict-free attorney as a result. The [three-judge] panel committed a significant error when it ignored the record evidence that proved that Edwards’ conflicting interests adversely affected his performance.”
Neither side had a comment for this story.
Chester, 46, and Laird, 51, remain on death row in state prisons. Laird’s bid for a new trial is pending in state Supreme Court.