U.S. attorney says shooter shouldn't have had gun
By LISA THOMPSON
lisa.thompson@timesnews.com
One of the many sad facts to emerge from the January killing of Trooper Paul G. Richey was this: The gunman, Michael J. Smith, a man with a history of mental-health problems and marital discord, used the same .30-30 rifle to kill Richey that he had used 13 years before to threaten other police officers and his wife in a violent display at a Venango County car dealership.
Nothing in state law at the time of Smith's first violent crime in 1997 barred him from again possessing a firearm.
But federal law should have kept that gun and any others out of Smith's hands by virtue of his conviction for a first-degree misdemeanor crime, federal prosecutors said.
State police honored Richey's service and sacrifice Friday in a solemn State Police Memorial Day ceremony. Concerts and benefit dinners and T-shirt sales have been held to support his grieving family.
Federal authorities say that in the months since Richey's death, they have been working to ensure that guns remain out of reach for convicts such as Smith.
Robert Cessar, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, issued a letter to law enforcement about a week after the shooting.
"My desire is for each of your jurisdictions to be clear, under federal law, on the prohibition of firearm possession by persons convicted of crimes in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," he wrote.
"It is a violation of federal law for any person convicted of a misdemeanor of the first degree under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to possess a firearm. There exists no authority to grant a person with a qualifying conviction an exemption from this prohibition," he said.
That letter has sparked discussion from prosecutors' offices in Erie to a probation department in Coudersport about how state and federal gun laws overlap.
Cessar said he hopes the effort to "educate people about federal law will prevent a situation like what happened to Trooper Richey."
Not eligible
As the events surrounding the shooting unfolded on Jan. 13 in rural Venango County, Cessar and Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Piccinini, the head of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Erie, monitored the events from afar. Federal law enforcement were aiding state police who were trying to determine whether the gunman who fired on Richey was still in the home or at large, whether he was alive or dead.
Smith fired on Richey from a sniper's loft he created in an upstairs bedroom. When police made entry into the two-story farmhouse on Bredinsburg Road later in the day, they found he had killed his wife, Nancy Frey Smith, 56, and himself. He had three rifles, multiple rounds of ammunition and had set up tables near each window to balance his gun as he fired.
Piccinini said he was working to piece together what he could about Smith using law enforcement data banks and court records and then passing what he knew to Cessar.
They said they, like state police command staff, quickly came to realize that Smith was the sort of person the federal law had been crafted to disarm.
State Police Commissioner Col. Frank Pawlowski raised the concern at a news conference the day after the shooting. He said police wanted to know how Smith maintained ownership of the gun in the wake of the 1997 incident.
"I'm not happy about it," he said.
Smith brandishes .30-30
According to a criminal complaint filed by Sugarcreek Borough Police, Smith went to his wife's workplace just outside Franklin on March 28, 1997, and brandished a loaded .30-30 Marlin rifle.
Smith was "loud and boisterous" and threatened himself and others with the firearm, according to the complaint.
Smith pleaded guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor count of stalking, after seven other charges, including reckless endangerment, were bargained away.
When he neared the completion of his sentence, a three-year term of probation, Venango County Judge H. William White issued an order saying Smith could hunt and carry sporting weapons for the purpose of hunting, according to Venango County Court records.
Nothing in state law at that time barred Smith from possessing a weapon. And when he filed for the return of his gun, no one, it appears from the court record, objected to its return.
But under the then-relatively new Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a federal law, Smith was barred from owning a weapon by virtue of his conviction of a first-degree misdemeanor in Pennsylvania, federal authorities said
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