No new trial for county man on death row for 1986 murder
President Judge Thomas Doerr on Tuesday denied a request for a new trial from Butler County's only death row inmate, ending an extension that had previously been granted.
A Butler County jury sentenced Donald Mitchell Tedford, 67, to death in 1987, after finding him guilty of raping and murdering Jeanine Revak, 22, on Jan. 10 1986.
When prosecutors at the time mounted their case for the death penalty, Tedford instructed his attorney to offer no defense, leaving the jury no choice but to sentence him to death by electrocution.
Despite that decision, Tedford has since appealed his conviction and penalty on several court levels — most recently reaching the federal level, where it was sent back to the county for a final decision.
The state Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence and denied reargument in 1989. Tedford's Post-Conviction Relief Act petition was denied in July 2004, with the Supreme Court affirming that decision in November 2008, according to Doerr's filing.
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's based in Latrobe.
In this most recent appeal, which was filed in 2014 in Butler County Common Pleas Court as a second Post-Conviction Relief Act petition, Tedford asked Doerr to reopen the original case so that he can review the case material and has requested a new trial.
Responding to this request in a court filing, Senior Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos characterized the crime as “malicious and depraved conduct.”
“Tedford's request is unprecedented, illogical, and illegitimate as a matter of law,” Stoycos wrote in the court filing.
In another section of his response to the request, Stoycos wrote, “The request is also an unlawful attempt to commence a 'do over' of his trial.”
Tedford presented the government with several options on which to base reopening the case. One of them was to test the DNA of semen found on Revak's pants, but Stoycos rejected this argument.
And in Doerr's order, he concludes, “The Court adopts the Commonwealth's reasoning on this issue.”
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