Federal Court Grants New Trial to Pennsylvania Death-Row Prisoner Denied Representation by Counsel of Choice

A fed­er­al dis­trict court has grant­ed a new tri­al to Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er Samuel Randolph (pic­tured), hold­ing that the tri­al court uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly denied Randolph the right to be rep­re­sent­ed by coun­sel of choice, forc­ing him to go to tri­al with an unpre­pared court-appoint­ed lawyer with whom he had an ​“absolute[,] com­plete break­down of communication.” 

In over­turn­ing Randolph’s con­vic­tions and death sen­tences for the mur­ders of two men in a Harrisburg bar in 2001, Chief Judge Christopher Conner of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania harsh­ly crit­i­cized the Pennsylvania state courts’ han­dling of Randolph’s case. Conner said that Randolph’s tri­al judge had ​“no objec­tive­ly valid rea­son” for keep­ing coun­sel retained by Randolph’s fam­i­ly from enter­ing his appear­ance in the case. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rul­ing on the issue, Conner wrote, ​“was so lack­ing in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that there was an error well under­stood and com­pre­hend­ed in exist­ing law beyond any pos­si­bil­i­ty of fairmind­ed dis­agree­ment.” Conner exco­ri­at­ed the state appeals court for bas­ing its deci­sion on an ​“abbre­vi­at­ed and selec­tive recita­tion of facts” that ​“excludes numer­ous crit­i­cal details … [and] focus­es on mat­ters large­ly irrel­e­vant to the choice-of-counsel question.”

Randolph has long main­tained his inno­cence of the mur­ders and had alleged that police and pros­e­cu­tors with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in the case and selec­tive­ly refused to con­duct DNA test­ing of evi­dence that could exclude him as the killer. The fed­er­al court con­duct­ed a hear­ing on Randolph’s inno­cence claim in July 2019 but did not resolve the issue. ​“The excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence out­lined in this claim, if admis­si­ble, can be advanced at Randolph’s retri­al,” Conner wrote. 

In August 2002, the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas appoint­ed Allen C. Welch as lead coun­sel in Randolph’s mur­der case. Randolph and Welch — who was run­ning for dis­trict attor­ney in a neigh­bor­ing coun­ty at the time of tri­al — had sig­nif­i­cant dis­agree­ments about Welch’s tri­al prepa­ra­tion and defense strat­e­gy. Randolph repeat­ed­ly expressed con­cern to the tri­al court that Welch did ​“not have [his] best inter­est” in mind and that they had irrec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences regard­ing the approach to the case. 

Several months before tri­al, Randolph tried to retain pri­vate coun­sel, Samuel Stretton for the case but was unable to afford his fee. One week before tri­al, a sale of fam­i­ly assets enabled Randolph to secure funds to hire Stretton. However, because of the short notice, Stretton was already sched­uled to han­dle an attor­ney dis­ci­pli­nary tri­al on the morn­ing that jury selec­tion was set to begin. Welch and Stretton both sought short con­tin­u­ances to allow Stretton to han­dle jury selec­tion. After the court denied their ini­tial requests, Stretton asked for just a three-hour delay in the start of jury selec­tion. Without expla­na­tion, the tri­al court agreed to only a one-hour delay and reject­ed Stretton’s entry of appearance. 

In his opin­ion, Judge Conner wrote: ​“On one side of the scales sits a mul­ti­tude of good-faith, com­pelling rea­sons for per­mit­ting Attorney Stretton to rep­re­sent Randolph and for delay­ing tri­al by just a few hours so that he could select a jury. … On the oth­er side there is, quite lit­er­al­ly, not a sin­gle coun­ter­vail­ing rea­son for deny­ing the continuance.”

Conner not­ed that the break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Welch and Randolph was so severe that court-appoint­ed co-coun­sel ​“had to act as a ​‘trans­la­tor’” between the two. After he was con­vict­ed, Randolph waived coun­sel for the penal­ty phase, rep­re­sent­ed him­self, and refused to present any mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence or argu­ment in favor of a life sen­tence. Judge Conner wrote, ​“Randolph explained that he was ​‘not con­cerned’ if the death penal­ty was imposed because he fer­vent­ly believed that, among oth­er per­ceived wrongs, he had been denied his right to coun­sel of choice and deserved a new tri­al.” Ultimately, Judge Conner agreed, con­clud­ing that ​“the tri­al court’s ​‘unrea­son­ing and arbi­trary insis­tence upon expe­di­tious­ness in the face of a jus­ti­fi­able request for delay’ vio­lat­ed Randolph’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to coun­sel of choice.”