Selection of jury for murder trial begins
Jury selection also continued in another murder case.
STAFF REPORT
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — Jury selection is under way in Lawrence County Common Pleas Court in the murder trial of a man who’s accused of killing his girlfriend’s toddler.
Michael Peters, 18 months, was taken to Jameson Hospital the afternoon of April 12, 2008. He was covered with bruises.
The baby was transferred to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he died April 22. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide by blunt force trauma.
Mark Strickler, 23, of John Street here had been watching the baby while Michael’s mother, Loraine Peters, was at work.
Strickler told police who met him at Jameson that the baby had slipped under the water in the bathtub while he was away answering the phone. He also said the baby fell off a couch the night before and hit his head.
Strickler is charged with criminal homicide. District Attorney John Bongivengo said last year when charges were filed that he would seek the death penalty. He said recently that he will no longer do so because tests have revealed Strickler’s IQ is too low.
The child’s mother and his 4-year-old brother had lived with Strickler since February 2008, Loraine Peters testified at Strickler’s preliminary hearing last August.
Peters testified that Strickler was at home most of the day before she went to work at Giant Eagle on Butler Road.
That contradicted testimony by Strickler’s brother, Michael Strickler. Michael Strickler testified that his brother was with him most of the time, and that he dropped him off at his home at 2:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, jury selection continued Monday in the murder trial of Michael Roberts, 29, of New Castle, who’s accused of bludgeoning another city man with a bar stool.
Jury selection in that case began May 11. The district attorney’s office had indicated that seating jurors could take up to two weeks because it is a death-penalty case.
Roberts is accused of beating Daniel Palumbo, 48, on March 25, 2005, in Palumbo’s East Long Avenue basement. Palumbo died the next day at St. Elizabeth Health Center, Youngstown.