By JIM RUNKLE

jrunkle@lockhaven.com

LOCK HAVEN – The local court will be revisiting the conviction and death penalty of Shonda Dee Walter in the killing of a local veteran over 10 years ago.

Monday’s delay in a final resolution was due to several factors, including the complexity of the death penalty case, but was expected to reach its final chapter last January, when the Supreme Court rejected Walter’s appeal challenging the death penalty across the United States.

In this newest incarnation of the appeal process, defense attorney Dave Zuckerman is challenging the penalty phase of the process due to “ineffectual counsel.”

Walter, now 36 and incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy in Lycoming County, was convicted on April 18, 2005, in the hatchet killing of her elderly neighbor, James Sementelli, who lived at 17 N. Summit St., Lock Haven.

She was expected to return to that facility Tuesday, pending an “evidentiary hearing” now scheduled for December, before Clinton County Senior Judge J. Michael Williamson.

The earlier appeal followed opinions, most recently expressed by Justice Stephen Breyer, calling into question whether a death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution. Walter’s appeal was considered an invitation to the justices, to further address the death penalty head-on.

Walter was convicted of killing 83-year-old Sementelli with a hatchet when she was 24 years old.

Walter’s current defense team argued that her trial was unfair, in part because her trial lawyer openly conceded her guilt to the jury (she tried to have a new lawyer appointed, but the judge refused). In an appeal, the trial lawyer made arguments that one judge described as “unintelligible.”

Her new lawyers argue that Walter “emerged from an arbitrary process which fails to limit the death penalty to the worst offenders.”

Attorneys for Walter – the last woman on Pennsylvania’s death row – filed a writ petition with the court in November.

From the filed writ:

The conviction and sentence of death were affirmed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on March 20, 2009. and again last January by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Execution had been scheduled for April 22, 2010, but the sentence was placed on stay pending appeal.

No new execution date has been scheduled.

Defense attorney Steve Smith represented the defendant and former District Attorney Ted McKnight prosecuted.

More recently, the state Supreme Court last September heard arguments in a challenge to Gov. Tom Wolf’s declaration that he would impose a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania.

In February, shortly after taking office, Wolf said he would grant a reprieve in each case in which an execution was scheduled, citing questions about the “fundamental fairness” of capital sentencing in Pennsylvania. The governor also said people are more likely to be charged with a capital offense and sentenced to death if they are poor or members of a racial minority.

Almost 13 years ago, Lock Haven police discovered the body of James Sementelli inside his home. Sementelli, a veteran, sustained over 60 wounds, 18 fractures, and 45 bruises to various parts of his body, many of them to his head, face and neck.

The investigation soon focused on Walter, a young woman who lived with her mother in a house across the street from Sementelli.

Before trial, the Commonwealth gave notice of its intent to seek the death penalty, based on a single aggravating circumstance: murder committed while committing a felony.

Walter was bound over for trial in May 2003. Following an unsuccessful attempt to dismiss the aggravating circumstance, Walter was convicted of first-degree murder and felony theft.

A penalty hearing followed, at which Walter asserted three mitigating circumstances – The age of the defendant; the fact that the defendant had no significant history of prior criminal convictions and any other evidence of mitigation concerning the character and record of the defendant and the circumstances of the offense, (the “catchall mitigator”).

The jury found the single aggravating circumstance and no mitigating circumstances and returned a sentence of death.