Eric Frein—white, age 31
Sentenced in Pike County, Pennsylvania
By: a jury
Date of Crime: 9/12/14
Prosecution’s case/defense response: Frein lay in ambush across the road from a police station. From there he shot a state trooper to death and wounded another. His motive was to start a revolution to change America back to what it had been. He was captured after a manhunt that lasted several weeks. The defense showed that Frein had been largely influenced by his verbally abusive, anti-government father.
Sources: 4/29/17 News Eagle (Hawley, Pa.) (2017 WLNR 13298116)
Leeton Thomas—black, age 38
Sentenced in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
By: a jury
Date of Crime: 6/11/15
Prosecution’s case/defense response: Thomas burglarized the home of a mother and a teen daughter who had accused him of sexual molestation. He stabbed both of them to death and seriously injured a younger daughter. At the guilt/innocence phase the defense contended that Thomas was home in bed at the time of the attack. At the penalty phase the defense pointed out that Thomas as a hardworking, churchgoing family man; that he had endured poverty growing up in Jamaica; that he had no serious prior convictions; and that he suffered from depression and partial blindness from a ruptured pituitary gland.
Sources: Lancaster Newspapers 6/14/17 (2017 WLNR 28064006)