06 May 2021 :
Patrick Stollar's death sentence overturned. Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman has overturned the death sentence imposed on Patrick Stollar in 2007 after the trial court failed to instruct the sentencing jury that it must find that Stollar’s lack of a prior criminal record is a mitigating circumstance and consider it as a reason to spare his life. Stollar, now 42, White, was sentend to death on March 24, 2008 (see) after he confessed to killing 78-year-old Jean Heck in her home during a burglary in June 2003. Pennsylvania law includes as its first statutorily enumerated mitigating circumstance “The defendant has no significant history of prior criminal convictions.” Stollar had no prior criminal record, establishing the mitigating circumstance as a matter of law. Nonetheless, his trial prosecutor argued to the jury that it should not treat his lack of a criminal record as mitigating, and the court failed to provide any jury instruction on the issue. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has reversed several death sentences in virtually identical circumstances, and the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office conceded during Stollar’s post-conviction proceedings that the jury should have been instructed to find the “no significant history” mitigating circumstance.
