Click here to subscribe today or Login.
WILKES-BARRE — Larry Kansky, the attorney for a city mother accused of trying to asphyxiate herself and her two children in a parked car two years ago, is again seeking to have the county’s top assistant district attorney held in contempt for allegedly violating a gag order in the case.
First Assistant District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce violated Judge David W. Lupas’ order for a second time when he spoke to a reporter from The Citizens’ Voice last week about accusations prosecutors are colluding with court administration to deny defendants’ rights to a speedy trial, Kansky alleges in a motion filed Monday in Luzerne County Court.
His client, Melissa Ann Scholl, 33, faces two counts of attempted homicide. She and her children, then ages 5 and 7, were discovered in her car in the Williams Bus Line parking lot on Blackman Street on Dec. 9, 2015. Police found a green garden hose inserted in the car’s tail pipe, the other end leading into the car through a window.
Kansky claims Sanguedolce’s recent “undermining” and “false” statements to the newspaper taints readers who could potentially be called to serve as jurors in the case. Kansky challenges specific statements attributed in the article to Sanguedolce and claims they were totally fabricated.
“District attorney Samuel Sanguedolce simply makes things up to serve his own purpose,” Kansky wrote. He requests that Lupas hold the prosecutor in contempt of court and punish him to the “fullest extent of the law.”
Lupas briefly entertained a motion to dismiss the case last year on similar allegations made by Kansky. The defense attorney claimed Sanguedolce broke the order when he spoke to the Times Leader and The Citizens’ Voice on Nov. 14. Lupas denied the motion.
Sanguedolce had not immediately filed a response to Kansky’s motion.
Scholl, meanwhile, remains locked up in the county prison as state police continue to investigate the destruction of Scholl’s vehicle by Act Towing and Trailer in Wilkes-Barre Township.
