Pa. Supreme Court hears argument in 2016 slaying of Jefferson Hills Motel owner

The defense attorney for a man found guilty of killing the Jefferson Hills Motel owner in 2016 believes his client was denied a fair trial because jurors watched a 17-minute, videotaped police interview of the man wearing a jail uniform.

Derrick Gallaway, 65, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the May 27, 2016, shooting death of Dehnad “Danny” Taiedi, 78, at the motel on Route 51. The jury, which heard the case before former Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Mark V. Tranquilli, deliberated for just two hours following a three-day trial, during which Gallaway wore street clothes. The video was played at the end of the prosecution’s case.

In an appeal to the state Supreme Court, Gallaway’s defense attorney, James Baker, argued on Wednesday that the video was prejudicial - and that the sight of his client in jail garb impacted his right to the presumption of innocence.

“Severe prejudice insures whenever a defendant is portrayed in this way,” Baker said. “The jury will take this evidence and make assumptions.”

Among those assumptions, he said, is that the person is incarcerated because he has an extra level of dangerousness.

“Is that based on anything?” asked Justice P. Kevin Brobson. “How can we make such a broad conclusion - that it’s automatically prejudicial if a person is in prison garb?”

Before Baker could answer, Justice David N. Wecht interjected, criticizing Tranquilli for not making a more thorough determination on the issue during the trial.

“The complete absence of work by the trial judge to assess that question puts this case in such a problematic light,” Wecht said. “The trial judge utterly failed to do any weighing at all.”

But Justice Kevin M. Dougherty countered that Tranquilli did offer to give the jury a cautionary instruction on the video, which was declined by the defense.

“A limiting instruction does not make inadmissible evidence admissible,” Baker countered. “No limiting instruction could have saved the risk of prejudice here.”

Chief Justice Max Baer said that, presumably, Tranquilli did weigh whether the probative value of the video interview, - which prosecutors said showed Gallaway lied repeatedly - outweighed the potential prejudice of the jury seeing Gallaway in jail garb.

“The probative value of it seemed pretty compelling,” Baer said. “Why doesn’t the prejudicial value yield to the probative value?”

In his argument, Deputy District Attorney Michael Streilly said that it should.

“I don’t think the court is giving the trial court enough credit,” he said.

At trial, Gallaway, formerly of Sacramento, Calif., was in front of the jury dressed in street clothes the entire time, Streilly said. That, combined with the overwhelming amount of evidence - including the defendant’s DNA and blood found in the motel office -makes the issue of the video one that amounts to nothing more than harmless error which did not impact Gallaway’s right to a fair trial, Streilly said.

But Wecht responded: “If this was error, how do we know it’s harmless? We don’t have any reasoning what the trial judge was thinking.”

Streilly disagreed.

He told the court that Tranquilli made sure that the jurors knew that the video was taken the day after Gallaway was extradited back to Pittsburgh from California.

Throughout the trial, Streilly said, “This defendant walked into the courtroom a free man. He was wearing civilian clothing.”

Throughout the argument, several participants noted that the prosecution could have chosen to only play the audio of the interview to avoid the issue entirely.

But Streilly said there are reasons to play the video.

“Demeanor of a defendant is important,” he said. “There are instances where audio isn’t enough.”

The state Supreme Court took the case under advisement and will issue its decision at a later date.