A former Center Township man has asked a Westmoreland County Court judge to grant him a new trial in a seven-year-old murder case. 61-year-old Richard McAnulty has been pursuing a petition for Post Conviction Collateral Relief or several years.
McAnulty is serving life in prison for first degree murder in the shooting death of 39-year-old Harry Mears III of Southwest Greensburg, who had been involved in an extramarital affair with McAnulty’s wife. The affair had ended months before, but McAnulty had discovered emails from Mears to Diane McAnulty and had become enraged, driving thirty miles to the Mears home and shooting him. He chased the wounded Mears upstairs, where Mears crawled out onto a porch roof and fell to the ground. McAnulty shot him to death as Mears pleaded for his life, then got back in his vehicle and drove to his home, where he waited on his porch for police to arrive and surrendered peacefully.
McAnulty claims his former attorney, Tim Andrews, botched his defense by having Diane McAnulty testify about the emails. At a hearing yesterday before Judge Richard McCormick Jr., Andrews defended the decision, but McAnulty’s new attorney, Eric Dee, said Diane McAnulty’s testimony undermined the credibility of a defense psychologist. Andrews also told the judge that McAnulty made the decision to seek a lesser conviction for involuntary manslaughter and not for third degree murder because he felt he would not live long enough to get out of prison on a third degree murder conviction.
Judge McCormick ordered Dee to submit a brief within thirty days, and District Attorney John Peck to submit a response within thirty days thereafter.
McAnulty is serving his life sentence at the state prison in Huntingdon.
