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Thread: Michael Pruitt - Pennsylvania Death Row

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    Michael Pruitt - Pennsylvania Death Row







    Facts of the Crime:

    He raped and strangled Sunday school teacher Greta A. Gougler, 69, in September 2002 in her Reading home.

    Pruitt was sentenced to death in Berks County on May 3, 2005.

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    July 26, 2008

    Death sentence in Reading case is upheld

    By Holly Herman
    The Reading Eagle

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday upheld the May 2005 Berks County Court death sentence for Michael Pruitt in the 2002 rape and strangulation of a longtime Sunday school teacher in her Reading home.

    The court ruled that the prosecution provided enough evidence to warrant death for Pruitt, 45, formerly of Reading, in the Sept. 28, 2002, strangulation of Greta A. Gougler, 69, of 521 N. Ninth St.

    State law requires an automatic appeal to the Supreme Court for all death sentences.

    Assistant District Attorney Jonathan H. Kurland said the court's opinion grants justice for Gougler.

    "We are pleased," he said.

    Pruitt's attorneys, P. David Maynard and Michael J. Cammarano, argued against the death sentence in favor of life in prison because Pruitt was high on crack cocaine at the time and did not intend to kill Gougler.

    The lawyers said Pruitt was mentally unable to form an intent to kill Gougler, as required factor for murder, because he was using cocaine.

    But the justices said the only evidence that Pruitt was on cocaine was his own statement to police.
    The defense lawyers also argued that Senior Judge Albert A. Stallone improperly ruled that Pruitt was mentally competent to stand trial.

    The court ruled that the testimony from prosecution witness Dr. Timothy Michals of Philadelphia that Pruitt was mentally competent was credible.

    The court also agreed that Stallone properly determined after questioning the defendant that he was mentally competent to stand trial.

    Gougler, taught Sunday school at the former St. Stephen's United Church of Christ, Ninth and Greenwich streets, and sang in the music program for 57 years.

    According to court records:

    Pruitt watched Gougler as she worked in her yard, then followed her inside, where he raped and robbed her.

    He told police he wanted to steal money to buy drugs.

    Samples taken from Gougler's body contained Pruitt's DNA.

    http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=100371

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On April 17, 2009, Pruitt filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/pen...v01625/300999/

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    Selena Lehman's great aunt, Greta Gougler, was raped and murdered in her home in Reading in 2002 and the convicted killer was sentenced to death but has not been killed. She has a photo collage of her great aunt she displayed at the funeral.


    December 15, 2014

    Appeals stretch out the pain for murder victim's family

    By Ford Turner
    The Reading Eagle

    Her struggle is over, but for them, it never seems to end.

    Not for the people who most loved Greta Gougler. Smiling and brown-eyed, Greta was the sister and aunt who said the prayer at holiday meals and taught Sunday school. Slim and energetic even at 69, she walked miles as the neighborhood Avon lady around her white brick house on North Ninth Street.

    The struggle happened in that house on Sept. 28, 2002. A man barged into the back door, near the alley where Greta taught her nephew Gary to ride his bicycle. He hit her, strangled her and forced himself on her near the spot where her mother used to sit and listen to the radio.

    Alone in the house, Greta resisted. She weighed perhaps 110 pounds but was what sister-in-law Audrey Gougler called a "strongie" who once battled a would-be purse snatcher for her pocketbook and won. This time, the ferocity and intent of the attacker - who, it turned out, had already been arrested at least 11 times - was too much.

    Greta's body was found later by a police officer, naked and bruised and face-up on the dining room floor. She had been tied up with a phone cord, and other horrible things had been done to her. She was buried in Alsace Cemetery. Up the street from her house, friends at St. Stephen's United Church of Christ draped Greta's choir gown across her chair, because she had sung in the choir for 57 years.

    But the struggle seems endless for Greta's family. Nephew Gary, now a 59-year-old heating technician, once again had to dwell on the horrific end of Greta's life on Dec. 4. That day, the man sentenced to death nine years ago for the crime, Michael Pruitt, arrived in a Reading courtroom after the latest in many trips from death row to pursue appeals. A Gougler attends every one of Pruitt's appearances."If we don't go, we sort of don't care," said her sister-in-law, 85-year-old Audrey Gougler of Muhlenberg Township. "We don't forget her and what he did to her. She went through hell."

    Recurring pain

    Disturbing details of what happened to Greta - evidence of her struggling in vain, of beating and of rape - came out during the 2005 jury trial. They are etched in the minds of her family. They cause pain each time Pruitt returns to Reading from his cell in the State Correctional Institution at Greene, near the Ohio border.

    The jury sentenced Pruitt to death but Pennsylvania's death penalty is essentially fiction. It is almost never carried out. Pennsylvania governors have signed 429 death warrants since 1985, and only three convicted killers have been executed in that time. All three had stopped appealing their death sentences.

    Pruitt, working from his cell, has availed himself of the tremendous resources available to death row inmates and filed appeal after appeal. Gary Gougler - who watched this month as Pruitt, clad in a yellow-and-white prison shirt and with hands and feet shackled, discussed his case with Judge Scott D. Keller - once again found himself aggravated. "Twelve years," he said. "It's too long."

    In 2002, Pruitt was 38. He lived about a block from Greta. He had quit Reading High School in 10th grade and never worked more than 10 months at a single job. He had two children. At the time, charges previously filed against him in other incidents included aggravated assault, rape, burglary and intimidating a witness. Court documents indicate his mother, Joan Parker-Pruitt, told him to turn himself in to police in the days after Greta Gougler was found dead. A sister of Parker-Pruitt, reached by telephone, said Pruitt's mother did not want to be interviewed for this story. DNA evidence implicated Pruitt, according to court records. They show he talked to various people about his neighbor's death. Shillington attorney Michael Cammarano, who represented Pruitt after he was charged, worked out a plea deal in which his client would be sentenced to life in prison. Pruitt rejected it. Cammarano said, "He wanted to go to trial and we did our best."

    Her struggle remembered

    "We, the jurors, unanimously sentence the defendant to death." Sisters Selena and Sarah Gougler, Gary's daughters, were in the Berks County courtroom of Judge Albert A. Stallone when those words were uttered just before 5 p.m. on May 3, 2005. Justice, it seemed to them, would be forthcoming. The things they had heard about their aunt's death were shattering. After the sentence was pronounced, Stallone himself reacted. "This is without a doubt one of the most horrific offenses to a very fine individual, perhaps in the long history of this county," he said.

    Selena - now Selena Lehman, a 35-year-old mother of two who lives in Kenhorst - said images of Greta fighting alone and in vain against a rapist and killer have conjured themselves repeatedly in the minds of her family. "I definitely had a lot of flashbacks," said Selena, who works as a psychiatric intake clinician. "It is almost like post traumatic stress disorder."

    Her sister - now Sarah Giannotti, 32, and living in Fleetwood - said dwelling on Greta's ordeal, again and again, hurts. "You think, 'What was she thinking? What was she feeling? What were her thoughts as she left this world?' It's heartbreaking," Giannotti said. "Those things never leave you. Those horrible, horrific things that happened to her."

    An empty sentence

    The appeals system that allows death row inmates to stave off punishment for decades, if not forever, has three general phases: the direct appeal, the state Post-Conviction Collateral Relief Act, or PCRA, appeal and the federal habeas corpus petition. Nine years after his conviction, Pruitt is still in the second phase. But it is the workings of the third, federal phase, according to Berks County Chief Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Kurland, that contribute most to the stoppage of executions in Pennsylvania.

    More than 270 different legal developments - from things as trivial as proof of service to things as significant as a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order removing attorneys from the case - have been logged in Pruitt's criminal docket since the day he was sentenced to die. At least seven attorneys have represented Pruitt. Most, he has sought to have removed from his case. Writing by hand on a government form while in Berks County Prison, Pruitt in 2003 filed a $1 billion federal suit against his attorney, Richard Reynolds, alleging Reynolds was actually an "extended arm of prosecution."

    During his Dec. 4 appearance before Keller, Pruitt sought to have several federal public defender attorneys removed from his case. When one of Greta's sisters, 83-year-old Gloria Kotzer of Spring Township, heard what the session was about, she got riled. "This should not be allowed. He has done that several times," she said. "It is ridiculous how he has done this again and again."

    No end in sight


    With steely blue eyes set and forearms blackened by work on heating units, Gary Gougler makes it clear that he is willing to "take care" of Pruitt if the state cannot do it. "Anytime," Gougler says. On Dec. 4, he sat in court with a member of the district attorney's staff and watched Pruitt. Greta was his aunt. As a kid, he lived across the street from her, and she taught him to ride a bike. Her loss tore him up. "This changed him drastically," said his daughter Selena. "When you go through this and you understand the justice system and you see all the ins and outs of it, you become distrustful of it."

    Pruitt looked healthy and fit as he spoke with Keller. He made it clear he wanted to get rid of his Philadelphia-based federal attorneys who specialize in making appeals for death row inmates. Keller questioned Pruitt and told him he had received "excellent, excellent representation" from the federal attorneys. But he indicated it was within Pruitt's rights to ask for new counsel. Keller granted the request. He said it would take months for a new attorney to get up to speed on the case. Gary Gougler walked out of court, his mind on how things turned out for Aunt Greta and for Michael Pruitt. He said, "Why have laws?"

    http://www.readingeagle.com/news/art...late=mobileart

  5. #5
    Member Member DavidO's Avatar
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    Execution Date for Michael Pruitt - Pennsylvania - December 29th 2017.

    Please see link to date - http://www.theforgivenessfoundation....d-executions55

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Admin date ignore.

  7. #7
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    Berks death-row inmate gets reprieve

    READING, PA - A Berks County man who was set to be executed at the end of the month for the killing of a Sunday school teacher in her Reading home has been granted a reprieve.

    Michael Pruitt, 53, was scheduled for execution by lethal injection on Dec. 29 at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview, Centre County. But Pruitt's execution was stayed Monday by Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

    Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Secretary John E. Wetzel had signed a notice of execution on Nov. 8 for both Pruitt and Sheldon Hannibal, 45, of Philadelphia, who would have been the first prisoners executed in the state since 1999.

    Gov. Tom Wolf issued a moratorium on the death penalty in 2015. However, the law allows the governor or the secretary of the Department of Corrections to sign execution warrants. Wetzel, who earlier in his career worked at the Berks County Prison, has been signing all of the warrants since Wolf issued the moratorium.

    A Berks County jury sentenced Pruitt to death in May 2005 after convicting him of first-degree murder in the Sept. 28, 2002, strangulation of Greta A. Gougler, 69, of 521 N. Ninth St. Police said Pruitt raped, robbed and killed Gougler, who taught Sunday school at the former St. Stephen's United Church of Christ, after watching her working in her yard and then following her into her home, telling investigators that he wanted to steal money to buy drugs.

    Pruitt's sentence was upheld in June by the state Supreme Court, which ruled there was enough evidence to support the death sentence.

    Hannibal, who was sentenced to death in October 1994 for the 1992 murder of Peter LaCourt in Philadelphia, had his execution stayed on Nov. 9 by Judge Gerald A. McHugh Jr.

    Pruitt and Hannibal are in the State Correctional Institution at Greene, Greene County.

    Gary M. Heidnik, who raped and killed two women in Philadelphia, was the last inmate put to death in Pennsylvania, executed by lethal injection in July 1999.

    http://www.readingeagle.com/news/art...-gets-reprieve

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