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Neighbors, businesses react as Wilkes-Barre moves closer to demolishing two vacant properties in Miners Mills

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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By James O&#8217;Malley</p><p>jomalley@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Riccardi </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_Elvis-Riccardi.jpg</photo0><caption0>Riccardi </caption0></div></div>
<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; A man who cried &#8220;corruption&#8221; at his first-degree murder conviction claims prosecutorial misconduct in new appeal filings.</p><p>Elvis Riccardi, 37, through his lawyer Enid Harris, alleges in a petition filed Monday in Luzerne County Court that former county district attorney Jackie Musto Carroll violated his due process rights by allowing and relying on false testimony at trial.</p><p>The petition seeks a hearing on the issues raised and ultimately for a judge to vacate Riccardi&#8217;s conviction in the 2009 beating death of 34-year-old Donald Skiff and the resulting sentence.</p><p>According to the petition, Musto Carroll was aware that trial testimony from forensic pathologist Dr. Gary Ross describing for jurors an area of potentially fatal injury to Skiff&#8217;s skull was inaccurate, failed to correct it and later recalled it in her closing statement.</p><p>Ross testified that a &#8220;small, roughly circular defect&#8221; or hole at the base of Skiff&#8217;s skull could have been caused by an object similar to one Musto Carroll argued later was present beneath the man&#8217;s body.</p><p>This contradicts Ross&#8217;s initial report from July 2009, the petition says, which dismissed the defect as a &#8220;postmortem artifact.&#8221; In a letter attached to the petition as evidence, Ross writes to Musto Carroll on Aug. 24, 2010, informing her he could not rule out pre-mortem trauma after reviewing scene and autopsy photos at a pretrial conference days earlier.</p><p>According to the petition, Ross was in possession of X-ray images that another forensic pathologist, Dr. William Mannion, says in an email to Riccardi&#8217;s lawyer do not indicate the existence of the defect.</p><p>The petition says Ross made no mention in his testimony at trial of having seen the x-ray images, despite a report indicating he had reviewed them.</p><p>A message left Monday with Musto Carroll was not returned.</p><p>Jurors convicted Riccardi in Skiff&#8217;s death in June 2011, finding him guilty not only of murder but also of 18 other counts including robbery, kidnapping and arson. The jury deliberated for approximately two hours.</p><p>Riccardi told reports the verdict did not surprise him.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s Luzerne County,&#8221; he said, &#8220;corruption.&#8221;</p><p>Authorities alleged Riccardi and Michael Simonson, 38, kidnapped Skiff, took money from his bank account, tied him up and beat him, leaving him to die in a wooded area off Suscon Road in Jenkins Township.</p><p>Skiff&#8217;s vehicle was found charred in Plymouth, his home town, weeks before investigators located his body.</p><p>Prosecutors pursued the death penalty, but a deadlocked jury spared Riccardi, who Senior Judge Joseph Augello sentenced two months later to life imprisonment plus 71 additional years.</p><p>Simonson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in August 2010 to life in prison.</p><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach James O&#8217;Malley at 570-991-6390 or on Twitter @TL_omalley.</shirttailMeta></div>

Convicted Luzerne County killer claims prosecutor misconduct in appeal filings