State Superior Court has reversed Indiana County Judge Thomas Bianco’s ruling suppressing the cell phone records of Nathanial Price, one of two defendants charged in the beating deaths of a Cherryhill Township couple in October of 2016. The ruling returns the case to Indiana County Court, where the 22-year-old Price will stand trial on two counts of criminal homicide and single counts of robbery and conspiracy in the deaths of Timothy Gardner and Jacqueline Brink at their apartment along Hillside Drive.
Co-defendant Justin Stevenson pleaded guilty to two counts of second degree murder and is serving two life sentences in state prison without the chance at parole. A third defendant, Isaiah Scott, was 17 years old at the time of the murders, so his case was handled by Juvenile Probation. Scott did not participate in the beatings.
Gardner was beaten in a robbery attempt during a marijuana deal. Brink was murdered because she was a witness.
At issue in the appeal was whether or not the prosecution could use Price’s phone records of communications with Scott. Judge Bianco ruled that they were inadmissible because in their initial affidavit of probable cause, police had not established the probability that the phone records they were seeking to use were connected to the phone they seized from Price, or that they probably contained evidence of a crime. The appeals court reversal was based on the doctrine of inevitable discovery. In the opinion, Superior Court asserts, “The only question is whether the police would have inevitably discovered the evidence by lawful means.” It concludes that it would have.
The case is being prosecuted by the state attorney general’s office because of a possible conflict of interest involving the former law firm of Indiana County’s current district attorney, Bob Manzi.
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