A Butler judge decided to consider a post-conviction appeal Monday from a former Kittanning man serving life in prison for a 1990 murder.

Speaking through a video stream from the State Correctional Institution at Fayette, Steven D. Vogt appeared in front of President Judge Thomas Doerr to ask him to consider his appeal of the original conviction.

In his fifth appeal, filed June 12, 2017, Vogt alleges that co-defendant Arthur McClearn sent him a letter dated October 2016 in which McClearn recants his trial testimony implicating Vogt in the crime. After holding a hearing among Vogt; his lawyer, Nicole Thurner; and Senior Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Anne Buck, the prosecutor, Doerr ruled that the appeal would be heard in further detail at a future hearing.

According to previous reporting, Vogt and Walter Cowfer, now 52, of Export were found guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery by a jury on Jan. 31, 1991, for pelting a Muddy Creek Township man with rocks until he drowned in a strip mine pond.

They were implicated with three other people in the death of 60-year-old Francis Landry. Others implicated were McClearn; Margaret Zawodniak, then a 32-year-old mother of three who was acquitted by the same jury that found Vogt guilty; and Michael Sopo, who was 20 at the time.

Authorities believe that in May 1990 the group conspired to rob Landry, who had recently moved from his Portersville-area home to Cowfer's place.

Vogt and Cowfer reportedly pelted him with rocks for hours as he begged for his life, until he drowned in a strip mine pond in Clay Township.

An autopsy said Landry suffered broken ribs, bruises and scrapes before he died of asphyxiation due to drowning. Landry's body was discovered hours after his death by divers who had been using the pond for training.

But in a post-conviction relief appeal, Vogt claims he didn't commit the crime, citing the letter from McClearn. In the letter, McClearn writes that Vogt was drunk and passed out in a car during the murder.

On Monday, Buck, the prosecutor, questioned the authenticity of the letter.

“We don't know who wrote this letter. There's no proof that it was written by (McClearn),” Buck said. “To say that this is a recant and accept as fact this letter is a stretch.”

Buck also noted that Vogt's mother, who attended Monday's hearing, had previously approached McClearn for help in 2004 or 2005. During that meeting, Buck said, McClearn told Vogt's mother that he didn't want to have anything to do with Vogt. A hearing will be held to determine the authenticity and merit of the letter.

McClearn, who was 27 at the time of the trial, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, and Sopo pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill Landry.

Both testified in Vogt and Cowfer's three-day trial. Sopo told the jury the killing was initiated by Vogt because he was angry with Landry for giving him heart medication that he had claimed was a narcotic sedative.

According to court records, McClearn was sentenced to four to eight years, and Sopo to 1½ to three months in state prison.

On Monday, Vogt said McClearn died in January 2017, further complicating Vogt's appeal.

Vogt's 2017 appeal had previously been dismissed by Butler County court, but in 2018 the state's Superior Court ruled that the county court erred in dismissing the appeal as untimely.

The timeliness exception for newly discovered facts focuses on the facts, not the source of the facts, the decision states, and the Post-Conviction Relief Act court dismissed Vogt's petition as untimely because he failed to demonstrate that the new evidence would have compelled a different outcome.

However, the possibility of a different outcome at trial is not relevant to the timeliness of a petition, the document states, and the argument that McClearn's recantation letter “is simply a new source of previously known facts ... are the same as those asserted in a 2010 affidavit from Zawodniak.”

The decision states that, “The flaw in the commonwealth's argument is that it ignores the fact of McClearn's alleged recantation of his trial testimony.”