Click here to subscribe today or Login.
WILKES-BARRE — An appeal of Hugo Selenski’s sentence for a pair of 2002 murders will cost Luzerne County more than $2,000, according to a judge’s order issued Wednesday.
Luzerne County Judge Fred A. Pierantoni III signed the order May 26 instructing the county treasurer’s office to pay $2,084 to Edward J. Rymsza, a court-appointed attorney from Williamsport who represented the convicted double-murderer last year during an appeal of his sentence to the state Superior Court.
Appointed to Selenski’s defense team in January 2012, Rymsza represented Selenski alongside attorneys Bernard J. Brown and Hugh Taylor during Selenski’s double-homicide trial.
A jury last year convicted Selenski, 42, of two counts of first-degree murder in the May 2002 strangulation killings of Michael J. Kerkowski and Tammy Lynn Fassett. Their bodies were unearthed from a shallow grave outside Selenski’s Mount Olivet Road residence in June 2003.
Pierantoni formally sentenced Selenski to serve two consecutive life sentences for the murders plus 56 to 120 years in state prison on conspiracy and robbery charges. He is to serve that sentence consecutive to a 32-and-a-half to 65 year sentence he is already serving for a January 2003 home-invasion robbery.
Selenski is serving out his sentence at State Correctional Institute Forest in Forest County, according to state prison records.