It’s not clear yet whether or not a new request for a delay in a pretrial hearing for Nathanial Price will delay the actual trial.
Price, who turned 21 last month, is accused in the beatings deaths of 26-year-old Timothy Gardner and 20-year-old Jacqueline Brink at their apartment outside of Clymer in October of 2016. Co-defendant Justin Stevenson pleaded guilty last August to two counts of second-degree murder and is serving concurrent terms of life in prison without the chance of parole.
Prosecutors contend that Price and Stevenson jumped Gardner during a marijuana buy and beat him to death with a metal pipe, and that one of the suspects then went upstairs and used a baseball bat to kill Brink because she would have been a witness. Stevenson says Price killed Brink. Price claims it was Stevenson. A third defendant, Isaiah Scott, fled the scene during the beatings. He was originally charged in the killings as an adult, but his case was later transferred to Juvenile Probation because he was 17 years old at the time.
Jury selection for Price’s oft-delayed trial is set for November 18th. He’s charged with two counts of criminal homicide and single counts of robbery and conspiracy to robbery, and District Attorney Pat Dougherty will ask for the death penalty.
A pretrial conference had been planned for October 4th on attorney Thomas Dickey’s Omnibus Pretrial Motion for Relief. Judge Thomas Bianco has scheduled an August 14th hearing on Dickey’s request for a delay.
