By Liz Zemba
Tribune-Review
GREENSBURG, Pa. — A convicted killer who used razors to slash the faces of three Pennsylvania Department of Corrections employees dodged a charge of attempted homicide after a one-day trial in Fayette County, but the New York man was convicted of nine other charges that netted him up to another 126 years in jail.
A panel of 10 women and two men deliberated for 90 minutes Wednesday before declaring they were deadlocked on the attempted homicide charge against David Harris, 31, of Queens, N.Y. Jurors returned guilty verdicts on three counts each of aggravated assault, aggravated assault by a prisoner and simple assault.
Immediately after the verdicts were delivered, Judge Gerald R. Solomon sentenced Harris to 42 to 126 years in jail. The sentence is to be served consecutive to two life terms that Harris already was serving for first-degree murder convictions in Schuylkill County in 2002.
State police filed the assault charges after the Dec. 21, 2007 attack on a walkway at the State Correctional Institution at Fayette in LaBelle. Harris used two razors to slash a corrections counselor and two officers in their faces, according to trial testimony.
Harris was escorted from the State Correctional Institution at Greene in Greene County to Solomon’s courtroom under the supervision of four uniformed state corrections officers. He was shackled at the wrists and feet and wore a device that, had it been activated by the officers, would have delivered an electronic shock.
Other than court constables, uniformed law enforcement officers typically are not permitted in the courtroom during a trial and defendants are unrestrained. Solomon said he permitted both at Harris’ trial because regardless of their presence, testimony revealed Harris was incarcerated at the time of the attacks.
Crystal Fields-Gallagher, a corrections counselor at SCI Fayette, testified she passed Harris on the outdoor walkway on Dec. 21, 2007, as he was returning to his cell from a dining facility. She said he attacked her from behind after she advised him he would have to speak to another employee about his request to make a phone call.
“He grabbed me and pulled me back,” Fields-Gallagher testifed. “That’s when the attack occurred, when he started to cut me with razors.”
Fields-Gallagher testified she was blinded by blood from her wounds. Harris, she said, kicked her in the back when she fell to the ground. She said she feared for her life.
“I thought, if I don’t get up off this ground, I’m going to die,” Fields-Gallagher testified.
Two corrections officers, George J. Smith and Ryan D. Whitacre, testified Harris cut them in the face when they ran to the aid of Fields-Gallagher. Harris was eventually subdued as other officers responded to the incident.
Fields-Gallagher, who was the most severely injured of the three, was flown by medical helicopter to a Pittsburgh hospital. Despite several facial surgeries, she still bears visible scars from the attack.
The two corrections officers were treated at Uniontown Hospital and released.
Fields-Gallagher testified her injuries included facial lacerations from the top of her forehead down to her left cheek and from her right nostril to the cartilage in her right ear. Both eyelids were cut, as well.
She testified her face was so swollen from her injuries that her own children, ages 4, 6 and 11, did not recognize her. Fields-Gallagher said she has not yet returned to work. Her life, she said, has been forever changed by the attack.
“It’s changed me as a person,” Fields-Gallagher testified, tearfully. “I’m not the same person that I was. As a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, my family tells me I’m just not the same person.”
Although Solomon declared a mistrial on the attempted homicide charge, Fields-Gallagher yesterday said she was satisifed with the sentences on the other nine convictions.
“I have some closure now,” Fields-Gallagher said.
Prosecutor Linda Cordaro said the lengthy prison term is “well justified.”
Harris reprsented himself yesterday, but he did not mount a defense. He failed to give opening and closing statements and did not cross-examine witnesses. He called no witnesses on his behalf and declined to take the stand. He did not challenge any evidence that was introduced, including a video of the attack captured on cameras at the prison.
Harris’ previous first-degree murder convictions stem from the 2002 shootings of two 20-year-olds in Schuylkill County in a drug dispute, according to the Republican & Herald newspaper in Pottsville.
Copyright 2009 Tribune Review Publishing Company