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WILKES-BARRE — A man who cried “corruption” at his first-degree murder conviction claims prosecutorial misconduct in new appeal filings.
Elvis Riccardi, 37, through his lawyer Enid Harris, alleges in a petition filed Monday in Luzerne County Court that former county district attorney Jackie Musto Carroll violated his due process rights by allowing and relying on false testimony at trial.
The petition seeks a hearing on the issues raised and ultimately for a judge to vacate Riccardi’s conviction in the 2009 beating death of 34-year-old Donald Skiff and the resulting sentence.
According to the petition, Musto Carroll was aware that trial testimony from forensic pathologist Dr. Gary Ross describing for jurors an area of potentially fatal injury to Skiff’s skull was inaccurate, failed to correct it and later recalled it in her closing statement.
Ross testified that a “small, roughly circular defect” or hole at the base of Skiff’s skull could have been caused by an object similar to one Musto Carroll argued later was present beneath the man’s body.
This contradicts Ross’s initial report from July 2009, the petition says, which dismissed the defect as a “postmortem artifact.” In a letter attached to the petition as evidence, Ross writes to Musto Carroll on Aug. 24, 2010, informing her he could not rule out pre-mortem trauma after reviewing scene and autopsy photos at a pretrial conference days earlier.
According to the petition, Ross was in possession of X-ray images that another forensic pathologist, Dr. William Mannion, says in an email to Riccardi’s lawyer do not indicate the existence of the defect.
The petition says Ross made no mention in his testimony at trial of having seen the x-ray images, despite a report indicating he had reviewed them.
A message left Monday with Musto Carroll was not returned.
Jurors convicted Riccardi in Skiff’s death in June 2011, finding him guilty not only of murder but also of 18 other counts including robbery, kidnapping and arson. The jury deliberated for approximately two hours.
Riccardi told reports the verdict did not surprise him.
“It’s Luzerne County,” he said, “corruption.”
Authorities alleged Riccardi and Michael Simonson, 38, kidnapped Skiff, took money from his bank account, tied him up and beat him, leaving him to die in a wooded area off Suscon Road in Jenkins Township.
Skiff’s vehicle was found charred in Plymouth, his home town, weeks before investigators located his body.
Prosecutors pursued the death penalty, but a deadlocked jury spared Riccardi, who Senior Judge Joseph Augello sentenced two months later to life imprisonment plus 71 additional years.
Simonson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in August 2010 to life in prison.