Selenski 'confident' as jury gets case
STROUDSBURG - Hugo Selenski assessed his state of mind Thursday as he crouched into a sheriff's sedan after closing arguments in his Monroe County home invasion trial: "confident."
Confident after two state troopers testified laboratory testing on key pieces of physical evidence - including ski masks, gloves and towels recovered in the investigation - failed to indicate any blood or DNA link to Selenski.
Confident after his attorney, Monroe County Chief Public Defender Wieslaw Niemoczynski, challenged the quality of the prosecution's other evidence - the duct tape and plastic ties used to bind the victim of the home invasion, jeweler Samuel Goosay.
Victim Remembers: Samuel Goosay remembered the gun, the handcuffs and the threats of six-and-a-half years past: "I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you." He remembered Hugo Selenski.
Confidence Man: Selenski assessed his state of mind as he crouched into a sheriff's sedan after closing arguments in his Monroe County home invasion trial: "confident."
Guilty: Selenski, who said he felt "comfortable" going into deliberations, disputed the jurors' decision.
Déjà Vu: The trial offered a preview of the case Luzerne prosecutors plan to present when he is tried for a pair of May 2002 killings.
Confident after a prosecution case that did not include the only other witness who could have placed him in the Goosay home: co-defendant Paul Weakley.
Confident in another acquittal.
Jurors are scheduled to begin deliberating this morning, weighing Selenski's guilt or innocence on 14 charges including the felonies robbery, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy, Judge Margherita Patti Worthington said.
If convicted, Selenski faces a maximum 153 years in state prison and up to $250,000 in fines. If acquitted, Selenski still faces another trial and a possible death sentence if convicted in Luzerne County on charges he killed former pharmacist Michael Kerkowski and Kerkowski's girlfriend Tammy Fassett in May 2002.
Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Colleen Mancuso drew on evidence from the Kerkowski and Fassett killings as she attempted to link Selenski to the January 2003 home invasion and a pattern criminal behavior.
The bodies of Kerkowski and Fassett were discovered in June 2003 in the backyard of the Kingston Township home where Selenski lived with his former girlfriend, Christina Strom.
Kerkowski and Fassett were bound at the ankles with plastic ties and their eyes were covered with duct tape, similarly to the way Selenski and Weakley treated Goosay during the home invasion, Mancuso said.
"Those people passed, Mr. Goosay didn't," Mancuso said. "That's the difference."
Selenski repeatedly threatened to kill Goosay, the jeweler testified, and during an especially flagrant outburst, threatened to kill Goosay's wife, Ellen.
Selenski had also threatened to kill Kerkowski's father, mother and children, Mancuso said. In both cases, Mancuso said, Selenski demanded large sums of cash and threatened to burn down homes.
"It's his personality, it's his identity, it's who he is," Mancuso told jurors during her closing argument.
Selenski's trial for the Kerkowski and Fassett killings, which has already been delayed more than two years, is on hold indefinitely while the state Supreme Court considers Selenski's appeal of a decision that would have allowed Luzerne County prosecutors to follow Mancuso's lead and use evidence from the home invasion to tie him to the killings.
Niemoczynski tried to maintain the jury's focus on the home invasion case, cautioning jurors to not allow the alleged killings and the human nature of guilty until proven innocent to "cloud" their judgment in the case at hand.
He attacked the credibility of the prosecution case and criticized the work of state police investigators who pinned Selenski to the home invasion despite "DNA science that excluded" him from culpability.
"This is a case, it's close enough for government work," Niemoczynski said in his closing argument, invoking the idiomatic expression for a poorly executed assignment.
"You guys are the last line of defense to determine 'close enough for government work,'" Niemoczynski said.
Niemoczynski recounted the testimony of his first two witnesses, state Troopers Gerard Sachney and Shawn Noonan, who revealed the laboratory test results and, item-by-item, cast shadows of doubt on Selenski's guilt.
They said there had been no evidence to connect Selenski to the ski masks allegedly used in the home invasion or to the ski glove recovered in a bedroom at Goosay's home in Chestnuthill Township, or the bloody towels left in Goosay's kitchen and in a rooster-style duffel bag that Weakley allegedly left in Goosay's car.
Mancuso attempted to diffuse Niemoczynski's evidentiary deconstruction with a single question: "Paul Weakley's blood was on the towel in the rooster bag, right?"
Weakley, who pleaded guilty last year to a federal conspiracy charge encompassing the Kerkowski and Fassett killings and the home invasion, did not testify despite a plea agreement requiring his cooperation with all Selenski prosecutions.
Still, Mancuso relied on Weakley as a conduit to a conviction.
"This is a case about identity, and the defendant was the man who was in the Goosay house," Mancuso said. "He was there with Paul Weakley."
Niemoczynski demurred.
"This case is about identity," he said. "The identity of the person who actually did the things Mr. Goosay described."
