Trial set for youngest suspect in torture death

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

When the youngest of six defendants charged in the torture death of a mentally disabled woman goes to trial today, she’ll try to prove that it wasn’t a fit of jealous pique that inspired the killing.

Angela Marinucci, 18, of Greensburg, concedes she was involved in the death of Jennifer Daugherty, 30, according to her lawyer Michael DeMatt.

Prosecutors say Daugherty was bound with Christmas lights by people she thought were here friends, then beaten, forced to drink urine and detergent and then stabbed to death on Feb. 9, 2010. Her mangled body was found two days later, stuffed into a plastic garbage container and left beneath a truck in a school parking lot in Greensburg, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Authorities said Daugherty, described by her family as having the mental capacity of a 12- or 14-year-old, was found with her head shaved and her face painted with nail polish.

Marinucci, who was 17 at the time, is being tried separately from the others after dropping her fight to have her case tried in Westmoreland County Juvenile Court.

In March, she spent a day with prosecutors, detailing her version of Daugherty’s death. DeMatt said she had hoped for a plea bargain to charges less than the first-degree murder count that will automatically send her to prison for life if she’s convicted. With no such deal forthcoming, Marinucci will try to convince the jury of six men and six women that she wasn’t the instigator but a lesser player in Daugherty’s grisly demise, DeMatt said.

Greensburg police and District Attorney John Peck have said that Marinucci was sexually involved with the man most of the other defendants have identified as the ringleader of the killing, Ricky Smyrnes, 25, a small-time criminal. They allege that the others attacked and systematically tortured Daugherty after a jealous Marinucci learned that Smyrnes had also had sex with Daugherty.

“That’s exactly what the district attorney is going to be saying to the jury, and that’s going to be their theory of the case, and we disagree with that,” DeMatt told The Associated Press. Prosecutors said they believed Daugherty was raped during the torture, but no rape charges were filed.

The defense attorney wouldn’t comment on Marinucci’s alleged relationship with Smyrnes, but said, “The relationships involved here are complicated and I think it’s overly simplistic to put it the way the district attorney is putting it.”

Testimony and police statements that have emerged during pretrial hearings have most heavily implicated Smyrnes and his friend, Melvin Knight, 21.

Smyrne’s attorney has argued that his client’s IQ is so low, he cannot be executed under a U.S. Supreme Court decision barring the death penalty for the mentally disabled. That issue has yet to be resolved as Peck has said he will pursue the death penalty against Smyrnes, and two other defendants, Melvin Knight, 21, and Knight’s girlfriend, Amber Meidinger, 21, if they’re convicted of first-degree murder.