Dustin Briggs was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for the murders of two police officers
According to court documents Michael VanKuren, 36, and Christopher M. Burgert, 30, were two deputies who were attempting to serve an arrest warrant when Dustin Briggs would open fire killing the police officers
Dustin Brigs would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
In 2017 Dustin Briggs death sentence would be vacated and he would be sentenced to life
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Dustin Briggs is incarcerated at SCI Phoenix
Dustin Briggs Case
Since 2006, Dustin Ford Briggs has been on Pennsylvania’s death row after being convicted of the murders of Bradford County Sheriff’s Deputies Michael VanKuren and Christopher Burgert.
However, Briggs’ time on death row has come to an end as a Centre County senior judge has vacated the death sentence imposed against the Gillett man and instead sentenced Briggs to life imprisonment in a state correctional facility.
The ruling issued on March 30 by Centre County Senior Judge David E. Grine was on the basis of one of the eight claims filed by Briggs’ attorneys in their Petition for Post-Conviction Relief. That motion filed by Briggs’ attorney ultimately sought the vacation of not only their client’s sentence, but his conviction as well.
Specifically, Grine’s ruling focused on the fifth claim in the motion filed by Briggs’ attorney — that the “petitioner’s death sentence violates due process, his right to trial by jury, the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution” and a section of the Pennsylvania Judicial Code “where the jury instructions, the parties’ arguments and the verdict sheets caused the jury to aggregate all of the aggravating factors for both convictions before weighing them against the mitigating factors.”
Bradford County District Attorney Dan Barrett explained that this part of the motion claimed that the jury had not been properly instructed about weighing evidence for the death penalty.
“The instruction allowed the jury to put all aggravating factors together before comparing them with the mitigating factors,” said Barrett.
The instructions to the jury were handed down by the judge presiding over the case at the time, Judge Barry Feudale.
The ruling by Grine did not vacate Briggs’ conviction, but however stated that further proceedings will review the guilty verdicts handed down against Briggs.
The 40-year-old Briggs is currently listed by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections as an inmate at SCI Greene, a maximum security state correctional facility in Waynesburg, Pa.
The case against Briggs was prosecuted by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office after then-Bradford County District Attorney Steve Downs recused himself from the case.
As of press time Tuesday, officials from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office have not released a statement on Judge Grine’s ruling.
Briggs was convicted of first-degree murder in the 2004 killings of VanKuren and Burgert and sentenced to death in Bradford County Court. Then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signed Briggs’ execution warrant on Jan. 9, 2012 and Briggs was scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 8, 2012.
However, Briggs was granted a stay of execution on Jan. 26, 2012 by the U.S. District Court for Middle Pennsylvania.
With Briggs’ death sentence being vacated, it means that only two Bradford County defendants remain on Pennsylvania’s death row.
In 1994, Terry Chamberlain was given the death penalty after being convicted of murdering his wife and her boyfriend in 1991. In 1996, John Kohler was sentenced to death for the so-called “Hit Man Killings,” which involved Kohler training Bradford County resident William Curley to be a hit man. A woman and her child were murdered in the Kohler case.
Both Chamberlain and Kohler remain on death row, although orders of executions were signed by previous Pennsylvania state governors.
https://www.morning-times.com/news/article_f8175a4b-1c04-50a8-956f-0beac96b6bb6.html
