NORWICH – The New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division on Thursday upheld twice-convicted murderer Peter Wlasiuk’s appeal in the death of his wife, Patricia Wlasiuk, whose body was recovered from Guilford Lake in April of 2002.
Wlasiuk was first convicted of the crime of second degree murder in connection with Patricia’s death, which he maintains was accidental, in 2003. In 2006, that conviction was overturned, due to errors regarding the admittance of prejudicial evidence. As a result, the Chenango County Court granted Wlasiuk’s motion for the dismissal of the original indictment.
Wlasiuk was re-indicted in 2007 and was convicted a second time of second degree murder in 2008. He was subsequently sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division reversed Wlasiuk’s latest conviction on the grounds that he “received ineffective assistance of counsel” from his attorney, Randel Scharf, due to Scharf’s failure to “join in the prosecutor’s request that juror No. 5 be discharged for cause once it became clear that the juror had committed misconduct in obtaining his seat on the jury” and “introduced evidence that this Court previously held to be unduly prejudicial, inadmissible hearsay,” according to the Dec. 29 Supreme Court memorandum.
The evidence in question – entries from a diary allegedly kept by Patricia – was a point of contention in 2008 when Wlasiuk was last convicted. At the time of his sentencing, Wlasiuk said he deserved a new trial, due to the fact that the jury made its decision based on diary entries he had not had a chance to respond to in court. According to the Supreme Court memorandum – in response to a jury note asking if the diary entries could be considered evidence – Wlasiuk’s attorney stated, “Yeah, they can have it. It’s evidence.”
Shortly thereafter, the members of the jury reached a guilty verdict. The memorandum goes on to state that “certain jurors subsequently revealed that they switched their votes to guilty based upon the diary entries – indeed juror No. 5 gave television interviews explaining that he convinced ‘three holdouts’ to vote guilty based upon the diary entries – and defense counsel conceded that he should have requested a limiting instruction.”
Juror No. 5, at the time of Wlasiuk’s second trial, said while he knew Joyce Worden – a witness for the defense in Wlasiuk’s first trial and baby-sitter for his and Patricia’s children who was sexually involved with the couple – in a professional regard, he could be fair and “didn’t even know much about the [first] trial,” according to the court memorandum. He had, however, been interviewed by police at the time of the victim’s death, knew the victim and had worked with her in a professional setting and had heard nurses discuss Patricia and Peter’s marital problems. Wlasiuk’s attorney, according to the memorandum, “adamantly resisted” his discharge from the panel, however.
The Supreme Court memorandum puts forth that, “In the alternative defendant argues – and we agree – that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel due to defense counsel’s refusal to consent to the removal of juror No. 5 for cause.”
In 2002, during the initial investigation of the accident, Wlasiuk provided several different accounts of the events leading up to his wife’s death. According to the court memorandum, Wlasiuk “indicated that he was driving his pick-up truck and had swerved to miss a deer, driven into the lake,” and that Patricia’s body was still in the truck. At other times, Wlasiuk stated that his wife was driving, had swerved to miss a deer and that he was able to pull her out of the truck, but not the water.
