The McShane Firm, LLC - Law Offices

Jury Gets Case In Slaying Near Lake

The Patriot News

Tuesday December 14, 2004

By Pete Shellem

of The Patriot News

A Dauphin County jury this morning will resume deliberating the fates of two admitted drug dealers accused of killing an addict who had stolen heroin from them four years ago.

GIenn D. Taylor, 43, of Arrow Road, and Mwandishi G, Mitchell, 31, of the 100 block of South 14th Street, are charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in the Nov. 1, 2000, shooting of Haydee Freytes, 23, near Italian Lake.

After closing arguments yesterday, jurors deliberated for less than two hours before Judge Lawrence F. Clark Jr. sent them home shortly before 9:30 p.m.

In the closing arguments, attorneys for Mitchell and Taylor picked away at the testimony of the state’s key witness, a prostitute and former drug addict who said she was present when Freytes was killed.

They said the woman, whose name in being withheld by The Patriot-News, was lying to save herself from a lengthy jail stay.

Justin McShane, representing Taylor, said the woman was not at the scene.

He said he believes police and prosecutors didn’t believe her story either, because they took more than a year to make the arrest after she first told her story.

McShane noted that two other people she claimed were in the car with the defendants and Freytes on the night Freytes died were not charged.

The woman claims she was picked up by Mitchell and Taylor on the evening of Oct. 31, 2000 and they asked her where they could find Freytos.

She said they picked up Preytes along Third Street and drove to Italian Lake with two other people in the car. Mitchell and Taylor began beating Freytes, she said, and then dragged her from the car. She said she heard shots as she fled.

McShane and Mitchell’s attorney, Sanford Krevsky, attacked her story, pointing out that the informant didn’t tell police about the slaying until April 29, 2002, when she was incarcerated on parole violations.

Her description of the assault didn’t match forensic evidence that showed no bruising on Freytes’ face, the defense lawyers argued. Furthermore, she said Freytes was wearing a yellow floral sun dress, when in fact she was wearing jeans and a dark sweatshirt, they said.

First Assistant District Attorney Francis T. Chardo said the witness may have been wrong on some details, but would not have made up the whole story.

He charged that Freytes had refused to pay for $100 worth of heroin sold to her by Mitchell. Taylor sold the drug through Mitchell, according to testimony.

Chardo presented testimony that Freytes refused to pay her debt and ridiculed both men.

“The theft alone may not have been enough of a motive to kill her, but it was compounded by her defiance,” Chardo told the jury.

Two witnesses said Taylor was at a Halloween party at their house on the night of the slaying, but neither could account for his whereabouts after 11 p.m. Freytes died around 2 am.

In an unusual twist yesterday, Clark allowed a convicted-crack cocaine dealer to testify for the defense as an expert witness on the lucrative but dangerous trade of street-level drug dealing.

James D. Buckner, who twice has been convicted of drug-related offenses in Dauphin County, explained to jurors how the drug “industry standard” dictated that dealers who get ripped off learn to limit their responses unless they want to incur the unwanted attention of local law enforcement.

Chardo questioned whether drug dealers entertained any sort of “industry standard” at all.

“You don’t have monthly meetings to discuss what the industry standards should be, do you?” Chardo asked.

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