UPDATE:
The murder case against Nathanial Price is now on hold in Indiana County Court as his attorney seeks an appeal at the State Supreme Court.
A motions hearing for the 21-year-old Price was held yesterday by Judge Thomas Bianco one day after attorney Thomas Hooper filed a petition for permission to file an interlocutory appeal and an application for a stay of Price’s trial, which was scheduled to start next Monday. An interlocutory appeal focuses on one aspect of the trial before the trial itself has concluded. Indiana County District Attorney Pat Dougherty believes the appeal has to do with an order from Judge Thomas Bianco concerning the death penalty question.
WHAT WE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED
We are gathering information today on the murder case against Nathanial Price, which is now officially listed as “closed” in the Indiana County Court system.
A motions hearing for the 21-year-old Price was held yesterday by Judge Thomas Bianco, one day after attorney Thomas Hooper filed a petition for permission to file an interlocutory appeal and an application for a stay of Price’s trial, which was scheduled to begin next Monday, but which was also scheduled for another motions hearing on the following Monday. Essentially, Price is appealing the case before it goes to trial.
Prosecutors say Price and Justin Stevenson beat to death 26-year-old Timothy Gardner and 20-year-old Jacqueline Brink in October of 2016 at their Cherryhill township apartment outside of Clymer. The suspects had gone there to buy marijuana from Gardner but police said they planned to rob him instead. They jumped him and beat him to death with a metal pipe, then one of them went upstairs and killed Brink because she would have been a witness. Price and Stevenson each claim the other killed Brink. A third suspect, Isaiah Scott of Clymer, had his case adjudicated in juvenile probation.
Stevenson, who is now 22 years old, pleaded guilty last year to two counts of second-degree murder and is serving life in prison without the chance of parole.
