Butler County's only death row inmate has filed a hefty response to a county court judge's rejection of his request for a new trial.

A Butler County jury sentenced Donald Mitchell Tedford, now 67, to death in 1987 after finding him guilty of raping and murdering Jeanine Revak, 22, on Jan. 10, 1986. During the trial Tedford had his attorney offer no defense, but since then he has appealed his conviction and penalty across various courts, up to the federal level and back to the County Common Pleas Court where President Judge Thomas Doerr denied his request for a new trial.

But Tedford, through his current lawyer, has filed a response to Doerr's ruling, writing “there is something seriously wrong with this case” and going on to question several things related to the case.

The filing claims there are hundreds of pages of documents collected by state police that Tedford and his attorneys don't have access to, and requests DNA testing be done to determine if there are any bodily fluids on the victim's clothes and, if so, whose they might be.

Many of the arguments made in the most recent filing are contained in previous appeals filed by Tedford, and have already been rejected by Doerr.

Tedford met Revak at a Cranberry store while serving 15 to 30 years in prison for assaulting two women. For good behavior, Tedford had been given weekend furloughs and permission to work weekdays at Finishing Touches, where Revak was applying for a job.

In Tedford's response to the court's rejection, he questions the basis of his conviction in the first place, writing that if he “committed a bloody and brutal killing inside a business location,” referring to Finishing Touches, there should be “signs that such an act occurred there” providing a “fertile field for forensic evidence.”

He also criticizes the state's handling of the case, concluding that “a man will be sent on the road to an execution no civilized society could justify.”

A number of different attorneys have represented Tedford over the years. Currently listed as his attorneys are Adam Cogan, based in Greensburg, and Bruce Antkowiak who is based in Latrobe. Cogan offered no further comment on the case last week and said he hopes the court will reconsider its decision. But ultimately, the court may choose to not respond at all to Tedford's filing.

Revak was a former Carrick High School homecoming queen. Around the time of her murder she had two part-time jobs in township shops and had applied for a position at Finishing Touches. Her body was found by hunters in wooded state game lands in Washington County.

During the trial jailhouse informants testified that Tedford told them he lured the woman to the shop by promising her a job. But Revak rebuffed Tedford's sexual advance and he forced her to perform a sex act, knocked her unconscious and strangled her with a cord.

The informants testified that Tedford killed Revak to keep her from telling police what had happened and ruining his prison release arrangement.

In Tedford's filing, he claims the witnesses gave false testimony, writing that one of the informants “recanted and the other whose lifelong psychiatric disease, something never revealed at trial, has now rendered him incompetent for any purpose.”

In 2009 then-Gov. Ed Rendell signed the execution warrant for Tedford. Tedford then stalled his execution by requesting several extensions, which were granted.

In 2015 Gov. Tom Wolf placed a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania, though the death penalty remains in the law.