Oct 26, 2018 3 min read

The homicide trial of a 24-year-old Washington man who’s been in jail for more than five years was postponed Friday following weeks of grueling jury selection.

Washington County Common Pleas Judge John DiSalle granted the continuance at the request of Brandon L. Wolowski’s lawyers and county prosecutors.

Noah Geary, one of Wolowski’s court-appointed attorneys, pointed to a motion currently before the state Supreme Court that’s part of his bid to have the case assigned to a new judge.

“Both sides felt it would be problematic to start the trial on Monday with an outstanding ruling from the Supreme Court,” Geary said.

Wolowski is charged with homicide, attempted homicide, aggravated assault and robbery.

City police said he allegedly shot 37-year-old Matthew Mathias and Michelle Powell, Mathias’ girlfriend, several times each during a botched robbery attempt at the couple’s Fayette Street home Jan. 8, 2013.

Powell survived, but Mathias died of his wounds.

Wolowski could face the death penalty if he’s found guilty of first-degree murder.

Jury selection began Sept. 24. The trial was set to begin Monday, but might not have started then if jury selection was still underway.

As of Friday, only 10 people had been named to a panel that was to include 12 and at least two alternates.

But that morning, the attorneys for both sides – Geary and his co-counsel, Thomas N. Farrell, and prosecutors Leslie Ridge and Jason Walsh – along with Wolowski, who’d been brought over from the county jail, were present when DiSalle agreed to a joint request to continue the trial.

“The ultimate conclusion was, dismiss the jurors and see what the Supreme Court says, and then we’ll start fresh in February,” Geary said.

Ridge declined comment through a spokeswoman in the district attorney’s office, who cited the sensitivity of the case.

It was unclear why jury selection proceeded as far as it did before the postponement while Geary pressed forward with an appeal in which he’s trying to have DiSalle removed from the case.

The judge said he couldn’t discuss the continuance.

Geary initially filed a motion last year in which he asked DiSalle to recuse himself. In that filing, Geary accused DiSalle of a “pro-prosecution/anti-defendant bias.”

Among the instances Geary cited to support that claim was a reversal of a conviction of a Monongahela man Geary represented on appeal last year. The Superior Court ruled DiSalle committed multiple abuses of discretion that may have affected the outcome while he presided over that trial.

Geary also cited two occasions when he claimed DiSalle had “berated” jurors who’d failed to convict defendants – including one of Geary’s former clients.

DiSalle denied Geary’s motion in an order filed Dec. 4.

The Superior Court appeared to agree with the trial judge, denying Geary’s petition for review of that order. Geary went on to file a petition for review with the Supreme Court, which denied the request in a one-sentence order Oct. 11.

In a three-page concurrence, Justice David Wecht wrote that he agreed with his colleagues’ denial of the petition because it didn’t address the question of whether the court had jurisdiction in the matter. Wecht also stressed that he didn’t make any “endorsement or a repudiation” of DiSalle’s choice not to recuse himself.

Geary filed an “emergency motion to reconsider” Monday, addressing the jurisdiction issue.

“The government was uncomfortable starting the trial on Monday in light of the pending motion before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the issue of the recusal of the trial judge,” Geary said.