Two court-appointed attorneys who represented Anthony Milano’s killer received a combined total of more than $200,000 in taxpayer-funded compensation, according to documents released this week.
For about 15 years, Daniel A. Silverman and Jules Epstein served as appellate attorneys for Frank R. Chester, who murdered Milano almost 30 years ago.
The attorneys worked to prevent Chester’s execution and tried to obtain his freedom — partly on the claim that Chester’s trial attorney was deficient.
In 1987, Chester and Richard R. Laird escorted Milano out of a Bucks County tavern and kidnapped him to a nearby wooded area, where Milano’s throat was hacked out with a box cutter.
Milano was gay, and prosecutors called his murder an antigay hate crime, even though there were no hate-crime protections in place for the LGBT community.
A jury convicted Chester and Laird of first-degree murder and sentenced them to death. But their first-degree murder convictions were voided by federal judges due to faulty jury instructions by the trial judge.
Beginning in 2000, Chester claimed his trial attorney, Thomas Edward Jr., had a conflict of interest — necessitating the voiding of all his convictions.
In court papers, Chester noted that Edwards had a pending DUI charge during his trial, along with other personal, legal and financial problems.
In 2013, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones 2nd rejected Chester’s conflict-of-interest claim, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that rejection.
After Chester declined to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, his attorneys’ compensation figures became publicly accessible.
Between 2001-14, Silverman received $166,982.46 for his work on behalf of Chester on the district-court level. Between 2001-13, Epstein received $26,695 for his work on behalf of Chester on the district-court level.
A court spokesperson said all payment requests were reviewed by federal judges for reasonableness, prior to being approved.
Their hourly payment rates gradually increased over the years, from $100 to $180.
Last month, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals approved a payment of $31,168.80 to Silverman for work performed between October 2013 and May 2015.
Silverman worked on behalf of Chester for 172 hours during that time, at an hourly rate of $180, according to court documents.
Those hours include 132.9 doing legal research and writing, 19.1 interviewing and conferring with Chester and 18.7 obtaining and reviewing evidence and documents in the case.
For one of the hours Silverman worked — in January 2015 — he was paid $181, due to a recent rate increase.
Epstein has 45 days to submit a payment request to the Third Circuit for work performed on behalf of Chester since 2013.
Silverman and Epstein had no public comment about receiving the funds.
Chester remains convicted of second-degree murder, kidnapping and related offenses. Bucks County authorities have until March 2016 to decide whether to retry him for first-degree murder.
If they decline to retry him, Chester, 46, will be removed from death row. Meanwhile, he remains on death row at a state prison in Graterford.
Laird, 51, was retried and re-convicted of first-degree murder in 2007. He remains on death row at a state prison in Waynesburg.