Appeals stretch 4 decades for a prisoner convicted on little police evidence
A Pennsylvania man who has served 43 years of a life sentence for murder is still pursuing appeals
NEW KENSINGTON, Pa. (AP) — The four men who put Steve Szarewicz away for murder all changed their stories at one time or another, yet Szarewicz still sits behind bars. That's where he has been for almost 43 years.
A jury convicted him of killing Billy Merriwether, 25, who was shot twice in the back of the head and once in the chest, his body left facedown off a country road in western Pennsylvania in 1981.
There were no fingerprints, no eyewitness testimony and no DNA evidence linking Szarewicz to the scene. The case rested on the words of four jailhouse informants who all testified that Szarewicz confessed to them, and three of the four have recanted. Another inmate told the court the fourth witness against Szarewicz fabricated his story to settle a score.
Nevertheless, a Pittsburgh jury in 1983 found the informants’ testimony believable enough to convict Szarewicz, despite qualms they voiced to the judge about the lack of physical evidence.
