Nicholas L. Wiley was convicted of murdering three women in Syracuse, New York, in the spring of 2004. The women were Lottie Thompson, Tammy Passineau and Hannah Finnerty, and they were killed in April and May of that year, CNY Central reported. A jury in Onondaga County Court found him guilty of one count of murder in the first degree, three counts of murder in the second degree and three counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. Judgment was rendered on October 18, 2006, by Judge Joseph E. Fahey.
On November 13, 2009, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, Fourth Department, sitting in Rochester, affirmed the convictions. The court rejected his arguments that the evidence was too weak to support the verdict and that police had coerced his statements. It changed the judgment in one respect only, striking the fines imposed on the three weapon counts.
Lottie Thompson, Tammy Passineau and Hannah Finnerty were named by CNY Central, the Syracuse television news service, as the women whose 2004 murders led to Wiley's conviction. The station repeated their names in December 2013, when it recalled the case. The appeals court's written decision does not name any of them.
Little about the women's lives has been made public. Their ages, their families and what they did are not part of the court record, which confines itself to the legal questions raised by the defense. What the record does establish is the span of time: the killings took place in April and May 2004, and the first-degree verdict rested on a law that applies only to killings committed in separate criminal transactions.
New York reserves its most serious homicide charge, murder in the first degree, for a short list of circumstances. One of them was written for people who kill more than once. Under the Penal Law, a defendant over 18 commits first-degree murder when, besides intentionally causing one death, he intentionally caused the deaths of two or more other people in the state in separate criminal transactions within a period of 24 months, and the killings were committed in a similar fashion or under a common scheme or plan. The statute classes the offense as a class A-I felony.
That was the provision under which Wiley was convicted, according to the appellate opinion. A conviction under it requires proof that the killings were separate criminal transactions, not a single episode. The three second-degree murder counts were tried alongside it, together with three counts of possessing a weapon in the third degree under Penal Law section 265.02.
On appeal, Wiley's lawyer argued that the verdict was not supported by legally sufficient evidence and was against the weight of the evidence. The Appellate Division disagreed. The court held that it established that Wiley committed three murders "in a similar fashion," which is what the first-degree statute requires. The court gave no further account of the evidence in its opinion.
The case was tried before a jury in Onondaga County Court in Syracuse, with Judge Joseph E. Fahey presiding. CNY Central reported that Wiley was convicted in October 2006. The judgment from which he appealed was rendered on October 18, 2006.
Statements that Wiley gave to police were part of the evidence. Before they reached the jury, they were edited. According to the appellate opinion, Wiley agreed at trial to the use of a partly redacted version of his statement that referred to his prior "institutionalization." On appeal he argued that the statement had been "severely redacted." The Appellate Division held that he had not preserved that objection, because he had consented to the redacted version at trial, and it declined to consider the point in the interest of justice.
The central issue on appeal was whether Wiley's statements to detectives were voluntary. His lawyer argued that the interview amounted to psychological coercion. The opinion records that during questioning, police falsely told Wiley that they had found incriminating evidence.
The Appellate Division did not treat the lie as fatal to the statements. The test it applied was whether the deception created a "substantial risk that the defendant might falsely incriminate himself." It held that the interview did not rise to the level of psychological coercion, and that the false claim about the evidence did not create a substantial risk of a false confession. The statements stood.
CNY Central summarized that part of the ruling the day it was issued: the court found that Wiley "was not coerced when he gave statements to police" investigating the murders.
Wiley's appeal was argued for him by Mary P. Davison of the Frank H. Hiscock Legal Aid Society. Victoria M. White, of the office of Onondaga County District Attorney William J. Fitzpatrick, argued for the prosecution. The panel was made up of Justices Centra, who presided, Fahey, Peradotto, Carni and Gorski.
The decision is reported as People v Wiley, 67 AD3d 1370. Besides the rulings on the evidence and the statements, the court found one error in the sentence. The trial court had imposed a fine on each of the three weapon counts, and the Appellate Division held, citing Penal Law section 80.15, that this was error. The prosecution had not shown that Wiley's possession of the kitchen knives was separate and distinct from the killings. The court vacated the fines on the fifth, sixth and seventh counts and otherwise affirmed the judgment.
CNY Central reported the ruling that afternoon, noting that the court had set aside the fines against "the now 47-year-old Wiley" on the weapons charges and had found that the evidence supported the first- and second-degree murder charges he had contested.
In December 2013, reporting an unrelated fatal fire in Syracuse, CNY Central again recalled that Wiley had been found guilty of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the killings of Lottie Thompson, Hannah Finnerty and Tammy Passineau in April and May 2004.
April and May 2004: Lottie Thompson, Tammy Passineau and Hannah Finnerty are killed in Syracuse, New York.
2004: Wiley is questioned by police; detectives falsely tell him they found incriminating evidence.
October 2006: An Onondaga County Court jury finds him guilty of one count of first-degree murder, three counts of second-degree murder and three weapon counts.
October 18, 2006: Judgment is rendered by Judge Joseph E. Fahey.
November 13, 2009: The Appellate Division, Fourth Department, affirms the convictions and vacates only the fines on the three weapon counts (People v Wiley, 67 AD3d 1370).
December 2013: CNY Central recalls the convictions in a report on an unrelated fire.