Selenski guilty; prosecutors want maximum
STROUDSBURG - Hugo Selenski coolly maintained his innocence Friday after a Monroe County jury convicted him on all charges in a violent, January 2003 home invasion.
Selenski, who said he felt "confident" and "comfortable" going into deliberations, disputed the jurors' decision as sheriff's deputies led him to a sedan outside the Monroe County Courthouse.
"I'm not (guilty), but that's the verdict," Selenski said.
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.
Selenski faces a maximum 153 years in state prison and up to $250,000 in fines. He will be sentenced Sept. 21, Monroe County Judge Margherita Patti Worthington said.
Assistant District Attorney Colleen Mancuso said she would ask for the maximum allowable sentence under state guidelines, which require judges to determine a defendant's prison term based on his or her prior criminal record.
Selenski's attorney, Monroe County Chief Public Defender Wieslaw Niemoczynski, disputed the fairness of the prosecution case, which relied heavily on evidence from a pending double-homicide case against Selenski in Luzerne County, and said he would appeal.
Niemoczynski said prosecutors gave him little time to defend against the evidence from the killings - including handcuffs, plastic ties and duct tape that Mancuso said were similar to the ones used on the victim of the home invasion, Samuel Goosay.
"What troubles me most was the manner in which certain evidence came in from the neighboring county, the timing and the non-disclosure of discovery," Niemoczynski said. "It's really that part of the case that I'm directing my attention toward now."
Niemoczynski claimed prosecutors did not inform him of their intent to use the Luzerne County evidence until June 14, while he was on vacation. Niemoczynski said prosecutors did not provide him with the evidence until June 29 - eight days before the start of the trial. He said he did not receive a copy of a transcript used in the case - from a preliminary hearing in Luzerne County - until Tuesday, after the jury had been selected.
"How can that possibly be fair? That's the fundamental question in this case," Niemoczynski said. "If we get so desperate to seek convictions against people because we don't like them, that we're willing to grease the skids and cut the corners and all the rest of that, where does that put us? Is that what we're all about?"
Goosay, 65, the owner of a Tannersville jewelry store, identified Selenski, 35, as one of the two ski-masked men who broke into his Chestnuthill Township home, bound him and held him at gunpoint.
The bodies of the Luzerne County victims, Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett, were discovered in the backyard of the Kingston Township home where Selenski lived with his former girlfriend, Christina Strom, in June 2003. Kerkowski and Fassett were bound at the ankles with plastic ties and their eyes were covered with duct tape, Mancuso said.
Jurors deliberated for two hours.
Selenski, in a green shirt and tie, stood quietly with Niemoczynski as the foreman read "guilty" 14 times - for counts ranging from the felonies robbery, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy to the misdemeanors terroristic threats and false imprisonment. Goosay had been in court for the first two days of the trial, but did not witness the verdict.
"He has been through so much, he always was strong, he always was willing to assist us, but psychologically this has been weighing on him for six years," Mancuso said of Goosay. "I know he's relieved, I know he's happy it's over and I know he'll be very happy about the verdict."
Selenski and another masked man, Paul Weakley, forced their way through the rear door of Goosay's secluded Chestnuthill Township home, Goosay said.
Weakley, who pleaded guilty last year to a charge encompassing his role in the killings and the robbery, handcuffed Goosay behind his back, put duct tape over his eyes and removed about $800 in cash from his pants pocket, Goosay said.
Selenski and Weakley asked Goosay several times for $20,000, he said. They eventually got away with nearly $50,000 worth of jewelry.
Selenski and Weakley also demanded the keys to Goosay's car and his store, as well as the codes for his store's security system and safe, Goosay said. Selenski eventually fled after Weakley, who had gone to the jewelry store, tripped a security alarm.
Selenski, who eluded conviction in an earlier murder trial, faces the death penalty if convicted in the Kerkowski and Fassett killings.
Selenski was acquitted in Luzerne County in 2006 on two murder charges in the killing of Frank James and Adeiye Keiler, but remained imprisoned after a conviction for abusing their corpses.
The second murder trial, which has already been delayed more than two years, is on hold indefinitely while the state Supreme Court considers Selenski's appeal of a lower court decision that allowed prosecutors to present evidence from the home invasion.
"Now he has this conviction and I think psychologically that's going to play on him," Mancuso said. "It's going to be, 'I'm not always winning now, the momentum is not going with me forward at this point in time.' That's what I'm hoping."
