Trooper slaying appeal focuses on questioning

Associated Press

HARRISBURG, PA.

Pennsylvania’s highest court peppered a defense lawyer and a prosecutor with questions Thursday about the police interrogation of a man later convicted of killing one state trooper and wounding another to act out his anti-government beliefs.

Eric Frein, 35, on death row for the September 2014 ambush slaying of Cpl. Bryon Dickson II outside a police station in the Pocono Mountains, is arguing he deserves a new trial because investigators got a confession out of him after he declined to waive his Miranda right to remain silent.

“We believe it’s a simple matter, that if Mr. Frein unequivocally asserted his right to silence, then the commonwealth should have scrupulously honored the invocation of that right,” said his lawyer, William Ruzzo.

He said that if investigators wanted to question him, they would have needed a waiver by Frein of his Miranda rights, made after some time had elapsed after he first declined to waive those rights, or in a location different from where he was initially interrogated.

Some justices indicated they may end up weighing that issue against what was described as a vast amount of evidence used to convict him.