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Hector Morales Pennsylvania Death Row

Hector Morales was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for the murder of Ronald Lee Simmons Jr. According to court documents Ronald Lee Simmons Jr was set to testify against Hector Morales in a Federal drug case so Morales would break into Simmons home and shoot him multiple times causing his death. Hector Morales would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Pennsylvania Death Row Inmate List

Hector Morales 2021 Information

Name	Name Type
HECTOR MORALEAS	Also Known As
HECTOR MORALES	Also Known As
HECTOR M MORALES	Also Known As
HECTOR MANUEL MORALES	Commit Name
HECTOR MANUEL MORALES JR	Also Known As
HECTOR MANUELM MORALES	Also Known As

Parole Number: 103CX
Age: 38
Date of Birth: 10/06/1982
Race/Ethnicity: HISPANIC
Height: 5′ 07″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: MEDIUM
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: YORK

Hector Morales More News

A jury determined Hector Manuel Morales must die for executing Ronald Lee Simmons Jr., a police informant scheduled to testify against him in a felony heroin-dealing case.

Jurors unanimously reached their decision about 5 p.m. Friday. Had even one of them refused to impose the death penalty, Morales would have been automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“It sends a strong message not to kill commonwealth witnesses who are confidential informants,” chief deputy prosecutor Karen Comery said. “And Ronald Simmons and his family got justice.”

Defense attorneys Jeff Marshall and Joanne Floyd said they will look at appeal options.

“I’m just sad for (Morales’) family, sad for the victim’s family,” Marshall said as he left the courtroom.

“We are going to take every avenue of appeal open to Hector,” Floyd said. “And we think we might have some issues that might grant him a new trial.”

As the jury forewoman announced they were imposing a death sentence, several of Morales’ family members gasped and cried. The defendant dropped his head for a moment.

Several of Simmons’ family members also cried. His widow, Tina Simmons, appeared drained.

Morales, 28, of York City, paid no attention as the jurors were being individually polled about their decision. Instead he turned to his mother and comforted her, telling her, “It’s OK.”

He then turned his attention to two crying family members, trying to calm them. His hand shook nearly imperceptibly as he held it up to calm them.

The conviction: On Thursday afternoon, the jury convicted Morales of first-degree murder and burglary for the July 16, 2009, shooting death of Simmons, 42, of York City.

Common Pleas Judge Gregory M. Snyder scheduled formal sentencing for 9 a.m. March 1. Morales must still be sentenced on the burglary conviction, and Snyder said he will formally sentence Morales to death at that hearing.

Morales broke into the victim’s North Tremont Street home about 1 a.m. and shot him six times, jurors determined.

Simmons, known as “Country,” was a confidential informant who helped the York County Drug Task Force set up and bust Morales for dealing heroin. He was scheduled to testify against Morales at a preliminary hearing the same day he was murdered.

Comery argued to jurors three aggravating factors to support a death sentence: that Simmons was a prosecution witness who was executed to keep him from testifying; that Morales murdered Simmons during the course of another felony (burglary); and that Morales knowingly created a grave risk of death for another person — the victim’s wife.

Impaired? Defense attorney Jeff Marshall argued mitigating circumstances include that Morales was “substantially impaired” by alcohol and drugs at the time of the killing, and that while he may have been 26 years old at the time, his emotional age was younger.

“We know the end of the story of the life of Hector Morales,” Marshall said, then asked jurors “to look at the beginning of his life, and the middle of his life.”

He was referring to Friday morning’s testimony from Morales’ mother, his two sisters and the mothers of his 3- and 4-year-old daughters.

All testified the Morales family is extremely close, and that Morales is a loving, involved father to his girls.

Head injury: His mother, Carmen Morales, and sisters, Liz and Yareliz Morales, also told the jury that Hector Morales was struck by a car and badly hurt when he was about 9 years old. Marshall asked jurors to consider whether the killer’s head trauma affected his actions.

The three Morales women testified he was different after the accident. He became nervous and suffered migraines, they said, and required treatment for years.

They also testified that Hector Morales was deeply affected by the 2000 homicide of his oldest brother, as was their entire family.

“It was the first time I saw my dad and mom turn to drugs, because they couldn’t take it. … We all did, except my (two youngest siblings),” Liz Morales said. “It kind of helped us deal with the pain.”

She said their father is currently in state prison on drug offenses.

“What kind of guidance was (Morales) given?” Marshall asked the jury. “We’re asking you to understand Hector Morales.”

Michael Ballard Pennsylvania Death Row

Michael Ballard was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for a quadruple murder. According to court documents Michael Ballard was recently released on parole after spending time in prison for a murder when he would stab to death his former girlfriend Denise Merhi, 39; her father, Dennis Marsh, 62; her grandfather, Alvin Marsh Jr., 87; and Steven Zernhelt, 53, who was a neighbor who came over to investigate the noise. Michael Ballard would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

Pennsylvania Death Row Inmate List

Michael Ballard 2021 Information

Name	Name Type
MICHAEL BALLARD	True Name
MICHAEL ERIC BALLARD	Commit Name

Parole Number: 671DN
Age: 47
Date of Birth: 08/15/1973
Race/Ethnicity: WHITE
Height: 6′ 01″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: LIGHT
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: LEHIGH

Michael Ballard More News

Gov

Tom Wolf on Wednesday halted the scheduled execution of Lehigh Valley mass murderer Michael Eric Ballard under a moratorium the governor has declared on capital punishment in the state.

Wolf granted a reprieve for Ballard, a five-time killer, as he has also done with three other convicted murders who were slated this year to face the death chamber. Wolf did so under a temporary freeze on executions he declared in February, when he called the death penalty “error prone, expensive and anything but infallible.”

Ballard was sent to death row for slaughtering four people inside a Northampton home in 2010 while on parole for a prior killing. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection Oct. 19, after he waived his rights to further appeals of his sentence.

Wolf intends to delay any imminent execution until after a Senate task force studying capital punishment releases its recommendations and they are “satisfactorily addressed,” said spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan, who offered no comment on Ballard’s case specifically.

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, who has called Ballard a “poster boy” for the death penalty, said Wolf’s decision was not a surprise.

“The governor has made his position very clear,” said Morganelli, a Democrat, like Wolf. “I respect the governor’s position very much, but I disagree with it.”

Morganelli has argued that Wolf is overstepping his authority in issuing reprieves, an issue that is before the state Supreme Court under a legal challenge by the Philadelphia district attorney’s office. Morganelli has raised the possibility of suing Wolf in Ballard’s case, though he said Wednesday he has yet to decide whether to do so.

One of Ballard’s attorneys, James Connell, said the reprieve was unsurprising. Connell said he hopes the state repeals its death penalty without another execution in Pennsylvania, spurred by the moratorium and the Senate committee studying capital punishment.

“Every life is important,” Connell said. “What I’d like to see happen is that the governor’s commission comes back and the politicians have the guts to say, ‘We’re not going to execute anyone anymore.'”

By Ballard’s own account, he savagely knifed to death his former girlfriend, Denise Merhi, 39; her father, Dennis Marsh, 62; her grandfather, Alvin Marsh Jr., 87; and Steven Zernhelt, 53, a neighbor who heard screams and tried to help.

At the time of the June 26, 2010 massacre, Ballard had recently been released from prison, where he served 17 years for murdering an Allentown man nearly two decades earlier. The state Supreme Court upheld Ballard’s death sentence in 2013, citing overwhelming evidence in support of it.

That Ballard allowed his appellate rights to expire was no surprise. He’d instructed his lawyers not to file any more appeals on his behalf, and he called them pointless in a death-row interview last year with The Morning Call.

But Ballard later decided to join two lawsuits challenging the state’s lethal injection method, telling the newspaper he had no faith that Pennsylvania could competently carry out an execution. One of those suits, filed in Commonwealth Court, is unresolved, though Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano concluded in July that it wasn’t a basis for continuing to delay Ballard’s sentence.

Ballard, now 42, is jailed at Greene State Prison in southwestern Pennsylvania, which houses the state’s largest death row.

https://www.capitalgazette.com/mc-mass-murderer-michael-ballard-execution-reprieve-20151007-story.html

Richard Poplawski Pennsylvania Death Row

Richard Poplawski was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for the murders of three police officers: Officer Eric G. Kelly, 41; Officer Stephen J. Mayhle, 29; and Officer Paul J. Sciullo, II, 37.According to court documents Richard Poplawski would open fire on the Officers after they arrived to investigate a domestic dispute. Richard Poplawski would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Pennsylvania Death Row Inmate List

Richard Poplawski 2021 Information

Name	Name Type
RICHARD ANDREW POPLAWSKI	Commit Name
RICHARD ANDREW POPLWASKI	Also Known As

Parole Number: KB7354
Age: 34
Date of Birth: 09/12/1986
Race/Ethnicity: WHITE
Height: 5′ 10″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: MEDIUM
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: ALLEGHENY

Richard Poplawski More News

The secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections on Wednesday signed a notice of execution for the Stanton Heights man convicted of killing three Pittsburgh police officers nearly eight years ago.

Richard Poplawski, 30, was sentenced to death in June 2011 after a Dauphin County jury found him guilty of killing Officers Paul J. Sciullo II, Stephen J. Mayhle and Eric G. Kelly on April 4, 2009.

The execution date of March 3, though, is just a formality. Poplawski still has a number of appellate avenues left, and next on the list should be a post-conviction relief act appeal before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning, who presided over the trial.

In addition, Gov. Tom Wolf, in January 2015, issued a moratorium on capital punishment in the state until recommendations from a bipartisan commission, formed six years ago to review the death penalty in Pennsylvania, can be reviewed and acted upon.

A final draft of that report now is being circulated among commission members, and it is expected to be released in coming weeks, according to staff members in the office of Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery.

The state Supreme Court, in December 2015, said the governor’s actions were “constitutionally sound,” and the moratorium remains in place.

Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel, who signed Poplawski’s notice of execution, along with three others on Wednesday, has signed 21 others since March 2015. All of those have been stayed, either pending appeal or by a reprieve issued by the governor.

Poplawski lost his first appeal, to the state Supreme Court in December 2015. His attorneys had argued that Judge Manning admitted evidence for the prosecution that was prejudicial against Poplawski, including his statements to police, racial epithets he made in a 911 call and his visits to white nationalist websites.

Further, Poplawski’s attorneys argued, prosecutors tried to elicit an emotional reaction from jurors regarding the impact of the officers’ deaths on their families. The Supreme Court disagreed.

Poplawski then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take his case, but he was denied in October.

https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2017/01/18/Execution-warrant-signed-for-cop-killer-Poplawski/stories/201701180177

Glenn Lyons Pennsylvania Death Row

Glenn Lyons was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for the torture murder of Kathy A. Leibig. According to court documents Glenn Lyons became upset when Kathy Leibig attempted to end their affair so he stabbed her over thirty times causing her death. Glenn Lyons would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Pennsylvania Death Row Inmate List

Glenn Lyons 2021 Information

Name	Name Type
ERIC GREEN	Also Known As
GLEN LYONS	Also Known As
GLENN LYONS	Commit Name
GLENN THOMAS	Also Known As

Parole Number: 4047U
Age: 55
Date of Birth: 06/13/1965
Race/Ethnicity: BLACK
Height: 5′ 11″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: LIGHT
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: PHILADELPHIA
Last Updated Time: 4/20/2021 4:00:19 AM

Glenn Lyons More News

A Berks County jury acted properly when it ruled that Glenn Lyons should be executed for the May 2008 torture-murder of a woman with whom he was having an affair, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled.

The victim, 45-year-old Kathy A. Leibig of Lebanon County, was stabbed 30 times and left to bleed to death in her car.

Investigators said Lyons, 48, told a prison cell mate that he killed Leibig because she wanted to end their affair. The two met in 2007 while working at a candy company.

The Supreme Court issued its ruling upholding the death sentence on Wednesday, more than two years after Berks County Judge Paul M. Yatron imposed it for Lyons’ convictions on charges of first- and third-degree murder. In an opinion by Justice Debra McCloskey Todd, the state’s highest court rejected arguments by Lyons that prosecutors had failed to prove he had killed Leibig.

Lyons argued that Leibig was slain by an unknown man in a yellow hooded sweat shirt who attacked him and knocked him out while he and Liebig were in her car. He claimed he had Leibig’s blood on his own clothing because he regained consciousness to find Leibig already dead and had hugged her gore-soaked body.

Police told a different story.

They claimed Lyons stabbed Leibig with kitchen knives from his Reading apartment, then took her effects and ditched them and his blood-soaked sweatshirt in a trash bin. Lyons then spent several days on the lam doing drugs before being captured in Philadelphia, investigators said.

As for Lyons’ bloody clothes, prosecution experts testified that the blood patterns on the apparel was consistent not with a hug, but with the spatter from a vicious knife attack. The torture issue arose when a pathologist testified that Leibig likely was conscious throughout the brutal assault, which might have lasted as long as 15 minutes.

https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/2013/10/death_sentence_for_berks_count.html

Michael Parrish Pennsylvania Death Row

Michael Parrish was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for the murders of his girlfriend Victoria Adams, 23, and their 18-month-old son Sidney Parrish. According to court documents Michael Parrish, who is a former corrections officer, would shoot and kill Victoria Adams and Sidney Parrish following an argument. Michael Parrish would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Pennsylvania Death Row Inmate List

Michael Parrish 2021 Information

Name	Name Type
MICHAEL JOHN PARRISH	Commit Name
MICHAEL JOHN PARRISH	True Name

Parole Number: KN7509
Age: 35
Date of Birth: 11/19/1985
Race/Ethnicity: WHITE
Height: 5′ 07″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: LIGHT
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: MONROE

Michael Parrish More News

A former Monroe County prison guard expected to be sentenced today for killing his girlfriend and their 20-month-old son unexpectedly withdrew his guilty plea to first-degree murder charges saying he believes he can mount a defense because he has studied the law while in jail the last two years.

Michael J. Parrish, 25, has been in Monroe County jail since he was charged with killing his girlfriend, Victoria Adams, 21, and their 20-month-old son Sidney, a heart transplant recipient, during a jealous rage in their Chestnuthill Township home in July 2009.

As Monroe County President Judge Robert Vican accepted Parrish’s not guilty plea, the family of Victoria Adams openly wept in court.

After the court proceeding ended, Kimberly Adams said she was disappointed in the outcome.

“I was just hoping to get this over with already,” said Adams, who is Victoria’s mother and Sidney’s grandmother. “We need closure. Nobody can move on until this over.”

Parrish, who wore a long-sleeve T-shirt that covered his Nazi tattoos, had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder telling Judge Vican, “I want to die because I committed these crimes.”

On Monday, he said he believes he is guilty of voluntary manslaughter — not first-degree murder — because the crimes were committed during the heat of passion.

Parrish allegedly shot Victoria Adams and their son July 6, 2009 after she returned home with three men after a night of partying while he was home watching their son.

In April, Parrish argued for the right to plead guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, telling the court he had formed the intent to kill after Adams returned home and before he started firing. He insisted the killings were premeditated.

Monroe County District Attorney E. David Christine is seeking the death penalty in the case. Prior to Parrish withdrawing his guilty plea, Christine had said this was the first case he had encountered in which the defendant wanted to be put to death.