Timothy Boczkowski was convicted of murdering two of his wives, four years apart, in two states. His first wife, Elaine Boczkowski, died on November 4, 1990, in Greensboro, North Carolina. His second wife, Maryann Boczkowski, died on November 7, 1994, in Ross Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 1994 death led to charges in Pennsylvania within days. Those charges in turn led North Carolina to bring a case over the 1990 death, and the North Carolina trial took place first. A jury there convicted him of first-degree murder on November 1, 1996, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In Pennsylvania a jury convicted him of first-degree murder on May 5, 1999, and returned a death sentence. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 2004 and set the death sentence aside.
The legal history is unusual because the order of the trials is the reverse of the order of the deaths, and because the North Carolina conviction was the only ground on which Pennsylvania prosecutors had sought the death penalty. The question of how that conviction came to exist, and whether Pennsylvania could rely on it, decided the penalty phase of the Pennsylvania case.
Elaine Boczkowski died in Greensboro on November 4, 1990, while the couple lived in Greensboro. Maryann Boczkowski died in Ross Township on November 7, 1994. Both were his wives at the time of their deaths.
Boczkowski had children. The dates and length of the marriages, and the family circumstances of the two women, are not known. Boczkowski was 63 years old in November 2018.
A criminal complaint charging Boczkowski with the murder of Maryann Boczkowski was filed in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1994, one week after her death. The Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas handled the case, and Judge David S. Cercone presided over the later trial.
The North Carolina case followed from the Pennsylvania charge. Boczkowski was charged in North Carolina only after he had been charged in Pennsylvania in the death of his second wife.
On February 15, 1995, at a hearing before Judge Kathleen A. Durkin of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania asked for an order sending Boczkowski to North Carolina to face the charge there, but asked that the order be stayed until the Pennsylvania charge had been resolved. The court granted the stay, and Boczkowski agreed to it.
In early October 1995 the trial court, in a ruling by Judge Cercone, granted part of a defense motion to limit the evidence the Commonwealth could present about the earlier death. The Commonwealth filed an appeal from that ruling on October 5, 1995. Pennsylvania's trial was therefore on hold while the appeal was decided.
On October 20, 1995, while that appeal was pending, a deputy district attorney authorized the county jail to release Boczkowski to North Carolina. The court that had issued the stay was not asked to lift it. He was delivered to North Carolina authorities on October 27, 1995. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court later described this as a unilateral act by one party to a case, taken in the face of a court order.
Boczkowski was convicted of the murder of Elaine Boczkowski on November 1, 1996, after a capital trial, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The offense was first-degree murder. The North Carolina court, the county of trial and the trial dates have not been reported.
A capital trial is one in which the prosecution seeks the death penalty. In this case the North Carolina jury did not return a death sentence, and the sentence was life imprisonment.
Boczkowski was returned to Pennsylvania on October 22, 1998, after his North Carolina proceedings and a transfer under the Interstate Agreement on Detainers. The Pennsylvania trial then went forward. It began in April 1999 before Judge Cercone in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.
Before the trial, the courts had settled how far the Commonwealth could use the earlier death in its case. The trial court had barred most of it in October 1995, but on the Commonwealth's interlocutory appeal the Superior Court reversed in part, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the evidence was admissible in the Commonwealth's case-in-chief for a limited purpose.
On May 5, 1999, the jury in Allegheny County found Boczkowski guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Maryann Boczkowski. At the penalty hearing the jury found one aggravating circumstance, that he had been convicted of another murder committed before or at the time of the offense. This was the North Carolina conviction of November 1, 1996. The jury found one mitigating circumstance, evidence concerning his character, and decided that the aggravating circumstance outweighed it. It returned a sentence of death. The trial court formally imposed that sentence on May 6, 1999.
The aggravating circumstance depended entirely on the North Carolina verdict. Had Boczkowski not been sent to North Carolina in October 1995, and tried there first, no earlier murder conviction would have existed when the Pennsylvania jury met.
Like every Pennsylvania death sentence, his went straight to the state Supreme Court. James M. Herb argued for Boczkowski on March 4, 2002; Karen T. Edwards, Edward Borkowski and Amy Zapp answered for the Commonwealth. Two years passed before the court spoke, on March 23, 2004, in an opinion by Justice Castille, with Chief Justice Zappala and Justices Cappy, Nigro, Newman, Saylor and Eakin taking part.
The appeal raised twenty claims. The court rejected every claim directed at the conviction:
It held that the evidence was sufficient to support a verdict of first-degree murder.
It held that there was no violation of the speedy-trial rule then in force. The complaint was filed in November 1994 and the trial began in April 1999, a span of 1,603 days. The court found that periods spent on the Commonwealth's interlocutory appeal, about 966 days, and on defense postponements and written waivers were excluded from the count, so that fewer than 365 countable days had passed.
It held that the evidence of the North Carolina case and the earlier death had been properly admitted.
It upheld the trial court's findings that Boczkowski had gone to the police station voluntarily, was not in custody and had been given his warnings, and that police stopped questioning once he asked for a lawyer. Statements he made were therefore not suppressed.
It found no abuse of discretion in the trial court's rulings on cumulative evidence, a motion for a mistrial, excited utterances, cross-examination and lay opinion, and it rejected his claims about the jury instructions.
The claim directed at the penalty succeeded. The Commonwealth had not disputed that the transfer to North Carolina produced the aggravating circumstance. It argued that it had not acted willfully, that changed circumstances after the ruling on the defense motion justified the transfer, and that the transfer protected Boczkowski's own speedy-trial right in North Carolina. The court was not persuaded. The Extradition Act allowed Pennsylvania to keep him until its own charges were resolved, and nothing in it allowed a party to disregard a valid stay. If circumstances had changed, the Commonwealth could have asked the court to lift the stay, which would have given the defense a chance to respond and a neutral judge a chance to decide. The opinion held that when a court order governs, only the court, not a party, may change or set it aside. Because the prosecutor's act was arbitrary and created the only aggravating circumstance, it introduced arbitrariness into the question of who was eligible for a death sentence. The court did not find it necessary to decide that the Commonwealth had acted in bad faith.
The court's order affirmed the conviction and directed that the sentence of death be vacated and the case remanded for a sentence of life imprisonment. It then stated that jurisdiction was relinquished.
Justice Saylor, joined by Justice Nigro, joined the court's opinion in all respects but one. He had difficulty with the admission of hearsay evidence about Elaine Boczkowski's fear of her husband in the months before her death, noting that courts differ on such evidence. He agreed that it can be relevant in limited circumstances and that the trial court had not abused its discretion.
Justice Eakin agreed that the conviction should be affirmed but dissented from the remand for a life sentence. In his view the stay had been requested by the Commonwealth, Boczkowski had not objected to the transfer, the interlocutory appeal had been necessary and filed in good faith rather than in order to create an aggravating circumstance, and sending him to a state that was ready to try him was sensible and served judicial economy. He wrote that the transfer was not clearly arbitrary. The real defect, he said, was the disregard of the stay, which the trial court had reviewed, finding no contempt and no need for sanctions. Vacating a valid jury verdict on penalty was, in his view, the wrong remedy.
After the Supreme Court's order the case returned to the Allegheny County court for a sentence of life imprisonment. He was resentenced to a second life sentence in Pennsylvania. The date of the resentencing has not been reported. On July 15, 2009, the Pennsylvania Superior Court issued a decision in the case marked "Affirmed"; what it decided has not been reported.
North Carolina abolished parole in October 1994, so inmates whose crimes were committed before then remain eligible for review. The state's parole commission reviews eligible offenders annually. On Wednesday, November 7, 2018, the commission announced that it was considering parole for Boczkowski, then 63, who had served more than 22 years of his North Carolina life sentence. A professor at the University of North Carolina School of Government, James Markham, said that inmates serving life sentences under the earlier law were eligible for parole after 20 years. Prison officials said that if he were paroled in North Carolina he would be transferred to Pennsylvania, where he also faced a life sentence, and that a hearing could take place the following month.
On December 13, 2018, North Carolina officials announced that parole had been granted for the death of Elaine Boczkowski. He was to serve a life sentence in Pennsylvania for the death of Maryann Boczkowski. The release did not free him: the Pennsylvania sentence kept him in custody.
On December 13, 2018, Boczkowski was to serve a life sentence in Pennsylvania. No later development has been reported.
November 4, 1990: death of Elaine Boczkowski, Greensboro, North Carolina.
November 7, 1994: death of Maryann Boczkowski, Ross Township, Pennsylvania.
November 14, 1994: complaint charging murder filed in Pennsylvania.
February 15, 1995: Allegheny County court grants a stay of extradition to North Carolina at the Commonwealth's request, with Boczkowski's agreement.
October 5, 1995: Commonwealth appeals a pretrial ruling on evidence.
October 20, 1995: a deputy district attorney authorizes his release to North Carolina.
October 27, 1995: he is delivered to North Carolina authorities.
November 1, 1996: convicted of first-degree murder in North Carolina; sentenced to life imprisonment.
October 22, 1998: returned to Pennsylvania.
April 1999: Pennsylvania trial begins.
May 5, 1999: jury convicts him of first-degree murder; later returns a death sentence.
May 6, 1999: death sentence formally imposed.
March 4, 2002: argument before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
March 23, 2004: Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirms the conviction, vacates the death sentence and remands for a life sentence.
July 15, 2009: Pennsylvania Superior Court decision in the case, listed as "Affirmed".
November 7, 2018: North Carolina parole commission announces it is considering parole.
December 13, 2018: North Carolina parole granted; life sentence in Pennsylvania to follow.