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WILKES-BARRE — Homicide conspiracy charges against a Sweet Valley couple remain in limbo after a hearing Thursday in Luzerne County Court.
Double-homicide suspects Holly Crawford and James Edward Roche will have to wait until next week to learn whether the charges will join their counts of criminal homicide after Luzerne County Judge Fred A. Pierantoni III granted the time period for further filings.
Court papers indicate Pierantoni will announce his ruling Sept. 3 at an open hearing. The date had already been scheduled as a pretrial date for both defendants.
Crawford, 40, and Roche, 33, are being tried separately in the April 2014 fatal shootings of Ronald “Barney” Evans and his son, 43-year-old Jeffrey Evans.
Police say a character in a movie reminded Roche of Ronald Evans, so he and Crawford drove to the 73-year-old’s Hunlock Township home to confront him.
Crawford is set to go to trial in September and Roche in early November.
Prosecutors began pursuing the additional counts in court filings last week, alleging the couple entered into a conspiracy to commit criminal homicide when they agreed to drive to the elder Evans’s home.
Assistant District Attorney Mamie Phillips on Thursday argued regulations allowing for additional charges to be filed against criminal defendants apply to the case, citing another case in Pennsylvania in which a judge allowed the addition of charges on the first day of trial.
Defense attorneys Jonathan Blum and Joanna Smith, representing Crawford and Roche respectively, countered arguing procedural rules allow for the kind of amendments prosecutors are seeking in the case of a formal defect in earlier filings, but not for charging additional offenses.
Smith said the addition of new charges would force a time-consuming overhaul in defense strategy as it would broaden the charges against her client who already has been incarcerated for more than a year. She then requested extra time to file briefs in response to prosecutors’ arguments, saying she had only received argument documents from prosecutors’ minutes before Thursday’s hearing commenced.
Pierantoni rebuked prosecutors for deciding to pursue additional charges so near to trial and after so much time had passed, and also for delays in trading paperwork.
“I can’t understand why everything is done last minute with the commonwealth,” the judge said.
