Appeals court to decide inmate's civil rights case
Eric Eisen, 32, claims the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office and prison officials violated his First, Sixth and 14th Amendment rights by denying him medication, attempting to obtain perjured testimony against him and blocking access to his attorney.
Eisen's attorney, James Lieber, claimed in 1999 that officials retaliated against Eisen when he asked a federal judge to throw out his guilty plea and grant him a trial.
This separate lawsuit, also filed in 1999, is pending in federal court. There has been no action in the case for a year, although some experts say it is ready to be decided.
Shortly after filing the lawsuit, officials transferred Eisen from the State Correctional Institution-Somerset to SCI-Dallas in Luzerne County, making him largely unavailable to his attorneys, Lieber said.
'It looked like he was going to get a new trial. When that happened, certain officials did things to keep him away from his lawyer,' Lieber said. 'They are denying him his right to challenge his conviction.'
Mike Manko, a spokesman for the district attorney's office, declined to comment on either case.
In 1994, Eisen was sentenced by Common Pleas Judge Lawrence O'Toole to a mandatory life term without parole in the shotgun killing of Daniel J. Bostedo, 24, on Feb. 8, 1993.
Bostedo was killed in a botched robbery. Co-defendant James C. Smith, 33, of Scott Township received the mandatory life sentence in May 1994 from Common Pleas Judge Paul F. Lutty Jr. for the same offenses.
In 1996, Eisen was granted a trial, but the Superior Court of Pennsylvania vacated the ruling in 1998.
Eisen said he was wrongfully induced to plead guilty.
The district attorney's office also told Eisen the governor would look more favorably on a guilty plea if clemency and commutation of his sentence were ever considered, despite the fact that clemency is rarely granted.
In court papers, the district attorney's office said Eisen's 'claim that he would not have accepted the negotiated guilty plea is a sham.'
Eisen also pleaded guilty to charges of robbery and conspiracy. Under the plea agreement, no additional sentence was imposed on those counts and a second count of conspiracy to commit homicide was dismissed.
Joseph D. Wilcox can be reached at jwilcox@tribweb.com or (412) 391-8793.
