Padilla

As of Thursday, it has been 20 years since Miguel Angel Padilla, a native of Mexico, and two friends became upset when they were refused entry to an Altoona after-hours club known as the United Veterans Association on Union Avenue.

Padilla, a 25-year-old construction worker, went to a nearby car owned by one of his friends and retrieved a handgun bearing a laser focus.

He then proceeded to murder three people that included Alfred Mignogna, the owner of the club and a high school mathematics teacher, Frederick Rickabaugh, a club employee, and Stephen Heiss, an ex-Marine.

Padilla left the scene but later called police to report that he thought he had injured someone. Police went to the home of his friend, where they took Padilla into custody.

The three victims were well-known and well-liked, and the killings caused a great deal of grief locally.

Former Blair County District Attorney Richard Consiglio, who led the prosecution of Padilla and who was persistent in efforts to seek the death penalty, said this week the shooting spree that occurred about 2 a.m. on Aug. 28, 2005, “was a terrible, terrible, unprovoked attack.”

Padilla, he said, was a guy who did whatever he wanted, and he believed Padilla was a drug dealer.

“He was so bad of a person, nobody on the street would talk about him,” Consiglio said.

The retired DA said this week that after the shooting at the UVA, Padilla hid the gun and $19,000, which police eventually found.

Relatives of the victims were all in favor of seeking the death penalty, Consiglio stated.

He finds it unacceptable that the death penalty has been barred in Pennsylvania by Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Consiglio talked openly this week about the incident and the trial.

After Padilla and his friends were refused entry to the club, he went to a car owned by one of the friends and obtained a gun. He opened fire, killing the club owner who was in the parking lot. He next shot the employee.

In an act of heroism, Consiglio explained, the ex-Marine, in an attempt to protect the girl he was with that night, was himself killed.

Consiglio said several people at the scene acted heroically as they helped others seek protection from the spray of bullets.

The jury for the Padilla case was chosen from Cumberland County, but the trial was held in Blair County.

The jury recommended Padilla receive the death penalty for each of the murders and on Feb. 1, 2007, and former Blair County Judge Hiram A. Carpenter followed the jury’s recommendation.

Padilla, now 45, is incarcerated in the State Correctional Institution in Somerset County.

While he has been confined for the past 20 years, his case is far from closed.

Attorneys Laurence Shtasel of Philadelphia and Marc Brookman of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation recently filed a petition seeking a new trial for Padilla.

According to the appeals attorneys, “Mr. Padilla’s trial was riddled with errors, leading to an unreliable and unconstitutional verdict. This Court must grant a new trial as relief for these errors.”

Court authorities indicated that the Padilla request for a new trial will be heard by Blair County Senior Judge Timothy M. Sullivan.

The defense is attacking just about every aspect of the way the Padilla case was handled.

For instance, the defense contends Padilla’s right to a fair trial was violated because his initial defense team failed to seek a change of venue for the trial.

“Holding the trial in Blair County meant the courtroom resembled an armed camp,” according to his present lawyers.

Padilla, they pointed out, was required to wear a bulletproof vest over his jump suit.

“The only inference to be drawn by the jury was that Mr. Padilla was not only guilty, but especially dangerous and a threat to others,” the defense stated in its recent legal brief.

While the jury eventually was chosen in Cumberland County, that area of the state was “saturated” by alleged “inflammatory news coverage” of the case.

The defense concluded that, while Padilla received a change of venue for jury selection, a change of the trial to another county would have been more appropriate.

The new attorneys also contend that Padilla’s trial attorneys “failed in their duty to conduct a full investigation before settling on a reasonable trial strategy.”

As is pointed out, one of the primary concerns of the Padilla defense team was to prevent the jury from finding out he was an “illegal alien.”

Padilla was born in Colima, Mexico, and at age 9 came to America with his mother and eventually settled in Gallitzin.

His attorneys in their legal brief noted his trial defense did not work with the Mexican Consulate or support a gathering evidence about Padilla’s “traumatic and abusive childhood” in Mexico that could have been used as mitigation during the death penalty phase of his case or be used to explain why, on the night of the shooting, he may have unreasonably perceived that his friends were in danger from club personnel during the argument at the door of the UVA — called an “imperfect” self-defense argument. An imperfect defense occurs when a person has an unreasonable belief that someone may be in danger and overreacts to the perceived danger.

His lawyers are seeking the dismissal of the death penalty.

They also maintained that instances of prosecutorial misconduct should have been raised during earlier appeals.

It is also claimed that Padilla was denied effective counsel during his trial due to many conflicts and a “complete breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”

It is expected that an initial hearing on Padilla’s appeal could be scheduled within 90 days.