PA Bill Number: HR541
Title: Recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Description: A Resolution recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
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Last Action Date: Sep 27, 2024
Woman won't face PA charges for buying gun that killed trooper :: 03/01/2017
A woman whose illegally purchased gun was used to kill a Pennsylvania State Police trooper can't face charges in Pennsylvania because she was already prosecuted by federal authorities, a state court ruled.
Emily Joy Gross purchased a gun in May 2009 and gave it to her boyfriend, Daniel Autenrieth, in his Palmer Township apartment, authorities said. Autenrieth was prohibited from having a gun because of a protection-from-abuse order filed by his estranged wife.
On June 7, 2009, Autenrieth kidnapped his son from his wife's Nazareth home and led police on a 40-mile chase.
Autenrieth was stopped on Route 611 in Coolbaugh Township in Monroe County, where he used the gun to kill Trooper Joshua Miller and wound Trooper Robert Lombardo before Autenrieth was shot to death.
During the gunfire exchange, another trooper and a Tatamy police officer broke the passenger's-side window and pulled Autenrieth's 9-year-old son to safety.
Gunman was shot 8 times in shootout that killed trooper
Autenrieth, above, of Palmer Township fired three shots at two state troopers, hailed as heroes. Other police officers safely removed Autenrieth's 9-year-old son from his car after a 40-mile chase.
Gross faced a handful of charges in Monroe County Court for allegedly providing Autenrieth with the firearm, including prohibited possession of a firearm and illegally loaning, lending or giving a firearm.
In July 2010, Monroe County Judge Jennifer Harlacher Sibum dismissed the charges, saying they should have been filed in either Berks County, where Gross bought the gun from the Cabela's store off Interstate 78, or Northampton County, where she left the gun in Autenrieth's care.
Prosecutors appealed and, while that case worked its way through the appeal courts, Gross was charged in November 2009 by federal prosecutors for lying on a firearms application form when she bought the 9mm handgun.
Gross pleaded guilty to the federal charge in February 2011. She was sentenced in May 2011 to a seven-month prison sentence at a federal detention facility in West Virginia, followed by house arrest and three years of supervised release.
Then, in October 2014, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed the Monroe County judge's opinion, and sent the charges against Gross back to Monroe County Court for trial.
Gross claimed the Pennsylvania charges now amounted to double jeopardy because of the federal case and, on Tuesday, a three-judge Pennsylvania Superior Court panel agreed.
"The Commonwealth has not demonstrated that the law under which it seeks to prosecute Gross is designed to prevent a substantially different harm or evil from the law defining Gross' federal offense," Judge Anne E. Lazarus wrote in her opinion for the panel.
Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/03/womans_whose_illegally_bought.html
