In a 4-1 majority decision, the State Supreme Court has reversed a Superior Court decision in favor of the prosecution in the Nathanial Price murder case.
Price and Justin Stephenson were accused in 2016 of murdering Timothy Gardner and Jacqueline Brink in their Cherryhill Township apartment. According to investigators, the two went there ostensibly to buy marijuana from Gardner, but were planning to rob him instead, and they beat him to death with a metal pipe. Then, police said one of them went upstairs and beat Brink to death with a baseball bat because she would have been a witness against them.
Stephenson pleaded guilty to two counts of second degree murder and is serving life in prison without parole.
Price challenged the prosecution’s obtaining evidence through his cell phone records, arguing that it was illegally obtained. Judge Thomas Bianco ruled in the defendant’s favor, but Superior Court reversed the ruling based on the doctrine of “inevitable discovery” of the evidence.
In reversing that ruling, the Supreme Court returned the case to Superior Court, ordering it review Judge Bianco’s findings again without the inevitable discovery argument. The majority opinion was authored by Justice Christine Donohue. It was entered into the Indiana County Court record last week, as was a dissenting opinion written by Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy.
No trial date has been set as yet for Price.
Comments