Death bell rings as US killer sentenced
Print Edition
THE bell at America’s Pike County Courthouse last tolled the fate of a condemned killer in the 1980s. On Wednesday, it rang again.
Eric Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday.
The jury’s decision that Frein should die by lethal injection brought a shouted “yes!” from a gallery that included the slain officer’s mother and the trooper who suffered debilitating injuries after Frein shot him.
“Jurors have delivered full justice in this case and issued the penalty that is so richly deserved by Eric Frein,” said District Attorney Ray Tonkin.
Minutes after the jury issued it, a Pike County’s sheriff climbed the courthouse cupola and rang the bell eight times, following a tradition that dates to the 19th century.
Prosecutors said Frein was hoping to start an uprising against the government when he opened fire on the Blooming Grove barracks in the Pocono Mountains on September 12, 2014. Corporal Bryon Dickson, a Marine veteran was killed, and Trooper Alex Douglass was critically wounded.
Frein led police on a 48-day manhunt after the ambush, and for a time he was among America’s most wanted criminals.
Prosecutors portrayed him as a remorseless killer who attacked troopers at random in hopes of fomenting rebellion.
Frein kept a journal in which he described shooting Dickson twice and watching him fall “still and quiet.” In a letter to his parents, written while he was on the run but never sent, he complained about lost liberties and spoke of revolution .
Frein showed “wickedness of heart” when he “made a choice to pull that cold trigger again, again, again and again,” Tonkin said in his closing argument.
The gunman likely won’t face execution for decades, if ever.
Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, and Pennsylvania’s last execution took place in 1999.
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