The Pennsylvania Superior Court has vacated the sentences of Bryan Robert Freeman and David Jonathan Freeman, ordering that they be resentenced by a different judge. The appeals court found that the trial judge, the Honorable Douglas G. Reichley, should have recused himself from the resentencing proceedings because of his prior involvement as a prosecutor in related criminal matters, creating an unacceptable appearance of bias.
The Freeman brothers—Bryan, who was 17, and David, who was 16—pleaded guilty in 1995 to first-degree murder for the brutal killings of their mother, Brenda, and their father, Dennis, in their family home. Their cousin, Nelson Birdwell III, was also involved in the crimes. At the time of the pleas, the court imposed the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
After decades of litigation, including successful appeals based on U.S. Supreme Court rulings regarding juvenile sentencing, the brothers were entitled to new sentencing hearings. The matter eventually landed before Judge Reichley in the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas.
The Recusal Battle
The core issue on appeal centered on Judge Reichley’s past professional history, which the brothers argued made him incapable of impartially presiding over their resentencing.
The brothers filed a joint motion for recusal, pointing to two key roles Judge Reichley held while serving as an Assistant District Attorney:
1. Co-Defendant’s Appeal: Judge Reichley previously prosecuted the appeal for Nelson Birdwell, the brothers’ co-defendant in the murder case.
2. “Copycat” Killer Case: Judge Reichley prosecuted Jeffrey Howorth, who murdered his own parents shortly after the Freemans’ crimes. Court documents reveal that the prosecution in the Howorth case argued that Howorth was “inspired” or “liberated” by the Freeman murders, making the Freemans’ case “central” to Howorth’s prosecution.
The trial court denied the motion, and the resentencing proceeded, resulting in new sentences of 60 years to life for both Bryan and David. The brothers immediately appealed, arguing the denial of recusal was an abuse of discretion.
The Superior Court’s Reasoning: Appearance Over Subjectivity
The Superior Court, in an opinion authored by President Judge Lazarus, sided with the Freeman brothers on the recusal issue. The court emphasized that when reviewing a denial of a recusal motion, the standard is objective: whether a “significant minority of the lay community could reasonably question the court’s impartiality.” Actual bias does not need to be proven; the appearance of impropriety is sufficient.
The court heavily relied on precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Williams v. Pennsylvania, which addressed a similar situation where a former prosecutor later sat on the state supreme court as the case returned for collateral review.
The Superior Court found that Judge Reichley’s prior role as an advocate against Birdwell, the co-defendant in the *same case*, created an “impermissible risk of actual bias.”
“In our view, Judge Reichley’s prior representation of the Commonwealth against Birdwell, as the Brothers’ co-defendant in the same case, at any stage of the proceedings, requires that he recuse from the Brothers’ cases,” the opinion stated.
The court stressed that even if Judge Reichley were subjectively capable of setting aside his past professional involvement, the objective standard requires disqualification when the prior advocacy is so closely related to the current matter.
While the court acknowledged Judge Reichley’s involvement in the Howorth case further demonstrated his intimate familiarity with the facts of the Freeman murders, the primary basis for the reversal was his past representation of the Commonwealth against Birdwell.
Sentencing Issues Set Aside
Because the court determined that the resentencing hearing was tainted by the judge’s failure to recuse, the Superior Court vacated both the judgments of sentence (60 years to life) and the order denying recusal. The case has been remanded back to the Court of Common Pleas of Lehigh County for a new sentencing proceeding to be handled by a different jurist.
The court noted that because it was vacating the sentences based on the recusal issue, it did not need to address the brothers’ other claims, which included arguments that the 60-years-to-life sentences were manifestly excessive and amounted to de facto life sentences in violation of constitutional prohibitions against cruel punishment for juveniles.
A dissenting opinion was filed by Judge Stevens, though the details of that dissent were not included in the provided opinion text.
The decision brings a temporary halt to the sentencing saga for the Freeman brothers, who have been incarcerated since their initial pleas in 1995. The new sentencing hearing will now focus on applying current constitutional standards for sentencing juveniles who committed first-degree murder, without the shadow of the presiding judge’s prior adversarial roles in related proceedings.