Harlow Goes To Prison For Life
Last Harlow Post Ever: Harlow Cuadra has been sentenced to life in prison in a Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania courtroom this afternoon for the January 2007 murder of Bryan Kocis.
Harlow Cuadra will serve life in prison, after the jury of eight men and four women could not reach a unanimous decision whether prosecution presented any aggravating factors worthy of the death penalty.
Credit: Story broke at 4:45 pm EDT CitizensVoice.com
The same jury that convicted Cuadra Thursday of first-degree homicide for Bryan Kocis' January 2007 murder at his Dallas Township reached an impasse today. The jury deliberated for about five and a half hours before telling count Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. they could not reach a unanimous verdict despite being given more time by the judge.
The jury returned to the courtroom around 2:30 to tell Olszewski they agreed one of the factors wasn't valid, but had reach an impasse on the other.
Olszewski instructed jurors to try and reach a unanimous decision. The jury foreman didn't specify which of the two aggravating factors they were undecided.
Cuadra was found guilty of killing Kocis last week. Cuadra’s former lover and business partner, 35-year-old Joseph Kerekes, already is serving life after pleading guilty last December to second degree murder after making a deal with prosecutors.
Cuadra and Kerekes saw Kocis as a business competitor; the pair wanted Brent Corrigan who at the time was under contract with Kocis.
Kocis’ body was discovered in his home by firefighters responding to a blaze in the rural house in January 2007. More than 80 percent of his body was covered by third-degree burns and police said the fire had been set deliberately to destroy evidence.
An autopsy found that Kocis died of massive blood loss after his head was nearly sliced off. He suffered between 28 and 29 post mortem stab wounds before his home was torched.Share on Tumblr
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Matthew Conaster
Matt Conaster
I'm the Associate Webmaster for this website. I currently at Northwestern working on my post grad work. Formerly I live in Atlanta, Georgia but my hometown is Charlotte, North Carolina View all posts by Matthew Conaster
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Personally I think this is the best verdict that Harlow could have hoped for. After his turn on the witness stand I was sure he was going to get the death penalty. I personally do not think that the death penalty deters someone from killing or breaking the law. I also don’t believe that you should take a life as restitution for a crime.
Lets hope Harlow is resigned to his fate and he can live out the rest of his years in relative peace.
I totally agree Yves. I think that the trial was more than fair and the punishment Harlow got this afternoon was justice served at its finest.
oh the humanity! oh the terrible injustice that such a sweet innocent, blameless, young thing be unjustly convicted for this crime.
this was all judicial misconduct from the very start!
they neve should have been arrested!
the arrest and extradition were flawed!
the tapes should never have been introduced and the police should not have had anyone wearing a wire!
they were entrapped!
this is all about sean lockhart and grant roy!
it is about escorts in florida, dead marines, escorts dead in washington and people high in government!
it involves, gasp, REPUBLICANS!
and it is all brent corrigans fault.
and grant roys.
never mind the purchase of allt he items, the fake name for the appointment, computer records, evidence that puts the accused in the area of the murder at the time of the murder. actions of guilt after said murder. possession of items from the murder scene.
nope. ignore all of that.
i wonder how long a certain someone is going to jkeep up their harlow was wrongly convicted screed.
they both got life. they deserve it.
60 years to think about the lives he destroyed while living in the soul crushing monotony of the prison system.
Almost seems fair.
Cuadra should be grateful for life in prison. He will have plenty of time to meditate on what went wrong with his defense and the need for that defense to begin with.
Cuadra wanted his moment on the stand. It was his last real attempt to impress which is the theme of the leaked letter in which he states what color suits not to wear.
Cuadra’s jury was a mere technicality. His own big mouth, thankfully, opened the trap door under his feet.
These two grifters put 4 sets of victims under extreme duress for two years: Sean and Grant; the Kocis family; Cuadra’s family; and Kerekes’ family. They managed to get a small county with limited funds to expend thousands of dollars to prosecute their murder and attempt at slight of hand to cover it up.
Someone asked whether Kerekes and Cuadra would be instituitionalized together. No. There is now bad blood between the two. The Dept. of Corrections won’t chance altercations.
Breaking News: Cuadra appeals verdict
http://www.citizensvoice.com/articles/2009/04/07/news/doc49dbb8f02a4a1564353368.txt
“will g on Tue, 7th Apr 2009 4:47 pm
Breaking News: Cuadra appeals verdict
http://www.citizensvoice.com/articles/2009/04/07/news/doc49dbb8f02a4a1564353368.txt”
It was mentioned here a full 30 minutes earlier…
http://handjtrial.blogspot.com/
Thanks Will.
Do you know on what legal basis he is appealling, i.e. mistake; incompetent counsel, etc?
All anybody knows at this point is what’s in the article.
Will–
Now this is getting intriguing. Harlow wants 5 more minutes in the glam lights and glitter.
The Notice of Appeal is required to be filed within the time allowed by statue (usually 10-30 days following final judgment). Its a simple form and doesn’t set forth the grounds or argument of why he is appealing.
Following this filing of the Notice of Appeal the higher court’s clerk will docket the appeal and a time schedule is set by the Appellant Court as to when the briefs are to be filed.
Typically the court will order the verbatim transcripts to be prepared by the court’s reporter and address and rule on any matters concerning the defendant’s petition if any to proceed In Forma Pauperis (latin for ‘broke as fuck’) before the appeals process truly begins.
I would suspect Harlow has no funds to retain counsel for his direct appeal. Since a direct appeal is a constitutional right afforded to any criminal defendant the court will be required to appoint counsel to represent Harlow on appeal if they find Harlow has no means to employ counsel. His trial attorneys (who were retained during trial) may end up most likely not representing Harlow on appeal and the court will appoint counsel from a pool of attorneys usually more experienced with appeals.
Once the initial brief is filed the Commonwealth Attorney General’s office will answer the brief in writing. This process will take many months to complete before the Appeals Court will consider and rule on the appeal.
If the Commonwealth Appeals Court Affirms Harlow’s verdict and sentence then Harlow may petition the US Supreme Court for a Writ of Certiorari to hear the appeal court’s decision. If that fails Harlow will then have no other course to fight his case short of another action known as Writ of Habeas Corpus which is basically a post conviction petition that usually shows things like new evidence coming forth or some other matter not then known to everyone during the course of the initial trial.
All of these appeal hearings will be mostly done on paper with no appearance in court by Harlow himself. The appeals court may grant a few minutes to Harlow’s attorney for an oral argument before the panel of appeal judges – but short of that this will all be done on paper. Meanwhile Harlow will learn about all of this via US Mail. In fact more people will know about what’s going on before Harlow himself knows.
Bottom-line as I see it, Harlow’s trial was more than fair and short of some new evidence that would appear to show him innocent of the crime he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.
His best bet will be to become a model inmate and hope somewhere in the future the laws may change and afford him a chance at parole or a reduction in his sentence for being a good boy. This is a very likely event that may come to pass as prisons become more crowded and politics shift away from anti-crime legislature. The late 1960s were the last era of this type of current change. They say history repeats itself. In 30-40 years Harlow MAY once again walk the streets.
Thanks for that information Matthew.
Just wanted to mention that I neglected to give PC of the blog “Harlow and Joe. . .On Trial” credit for breaking this story. He had the scoop before the Citizens’ Voice.
http://handjtrial.blogspot.com/2009/04/harlow-to-file-appeal.html