In 1982, a Federal trial jury ruled in favor of the claims of Gary W. Rank of Gratz, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, that his rights had been violated by three members of the state police force who investigated the 1979 strangulation death of Helen E. Horn, also of Gratz, and then charged Rank with her murder. Rank was tried and acquitted, but in the process, Rank’s lawyer discovered that there was a falsification of evidence and that his constitutional rights were violated. Rank sued in 1982 and won a judgment against the state police officers. This blog post is about that suit. It is told through articles of the time from the Harrisburg Patriot.
Case Background:
On 22 March 1979, Helen E. Horn, a widow, returned home from an evening meeting of the Gratz Historical Society, where she was the treasurer and had just collected money for an upcoming bus trip for the group. Within minutes of entering her house in Gratz, she was on her dining room floor – naked and dead in a pool of blood. The next morning, her cleaning lady discovered the body. The coroner, the autopsy, and the investigation supported that she was murdered.
Although a Gratz man, Gary W. Rank, age 18, was charged with her murder, at trial he was acquitted. The prosecution never established a motive and the only “real” evidence presented were dubious fingerprints. Later, Rank’s innocence was further supported by a law suit he filed in Federal court claiming that his civil rights had been violated and that the evidence presented against him had been falsified by the state police. The jury ruled in his favor and three of the murder investigators from the state police were forced to pay both compensatory and punitive damages.
The above crime and the trial of Gary W. Rank were previously discussed in multiple prior blog posts. See:
Today’s blog post looks in greater depth at the efforts of Gary W. Rank to clear his name — after he was acquitted at the criminal trial in 1979.
The first attempt was made by Rank’s trial lawyer, John J. Krafzig Jr., who asked that the criminal record related to the Horn murder be expunged. That brought a stinging rebuke from the judge, who didn’t believe the jury had delivered a correct verdict.
Rank, in 1980, then engaged Philadelphia attorney Gilbert Abramson who filed a civil law suit against a number of persons involved in bringing the charges against him. That suit was not accepted because of a late response on a technical matter.
Abramson, in 1981, re-filed the civil law suit in federal court claiming among other charges that Rank’s constitutional rights had been violated by the state police and that the state police had falsified evidence against him in order to search his home and then arrest him. In the trial that took place in 1982, the named officers were found responsible and ordered to pay a total of $55,500 in damages to Rank. Abramson then filed for a new trial claiming that the amount awarded did not come anywhere near the amount of financial loss suffered by Rank. The request for a new trial was denied.
In 1983, a state appeals court overruled the 1979 criminal trial judge’s refusal to expunge Rank’s record stating that the judge had abused his discretion. Rank’s record was cleared.
The story of Rank’s attempts to clear his name is told through articles that appeared in the Harrisburg Patriot. Note: This newspaper was not available on-line until recently.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, November 20, 1979:
RANK FAILS IN EFFORT TO EXPUNGE
By Ron Jury, Staff Writer
Dauphin County Judge John C. Dowling Wednesday refused to expunge the record of Gary W. Rank in the March slaying of an elderly Gratz woman. A jury acquitted Rank, 19, of the slaying at September trial.
In a seven-page opinion, Dowling said the jury found Rank innocent, but “A verdict so contrary to the evidence, while it must be accepted legally, it cannot in all conscience bind the presiding judge.” He added he is “totally unconvinced of Gary Rank‘s innocence” in the death of Helen Elizabeth Horn.
Rank’s attorney, John J. Krafsig Jr., filed a petition asking that Rank’s arrest record, fingerprint cards and other materials generated as the result of his arrest in April be destroyed and the records cleared.
Deputy District Attorney Joseph Kleinfelter opposed the action, citing a Superior Court case that states that an acquittal in a jury trial means that the jury has not been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is guilty. Such a verdict is not the same thing as saying a person is innocent.
Dowling cited the recent Superior Court case on expungement which arose from a decision by fellow county jurist Warren G. Morgan when he refused to expunge a record. Dowling said the court’s ruling “places the trial judge in the unique position of not only having the opportunity to comment on the jury’s verdict, but being obligated to do so.”
Prior to that ruling, Dowling said the “only finger that could be pointed at an acquitting jury in a homicide case” was the victim’s. A defendant found innocent by “his peers could literally rise up from his chair and laugh at the jury’s folly,” while the the trial judge could do nothing, he said.”
Dowling said that at best a judge could risk criticism by reminding jurors that effective law and order demand “not only good police work, strong prosecution and fair judges, but jurors with common sense and that in the long run the community gets the justice it deserves.”
The situation is very different when a defendant is convicted, Dowling said, adding that “incalculable are the paths open to avoid its consequences,” such as at post-trial motions and appeals.
Dowling reviewed evidence presented at the trial, including testimony by experts that Rank’s fingerprints were found on a broken cellar window and a basement door jamb at Mrs. Horn’s home.
Rank testified he had opened the cellar window several weeks before the slaying to put a cat inside. He explained his print on the door jamb by saying he was in the cellar four years earlier on a Boy Scout paper drive, the judge said. In rebuttal testimony, Kleinfelter showed that from the way Rank said he opened the window, “it would be impossible for his print to be on the place where it was found,” Dowling said.
Dowling concluded that there was no evidence at the expungement hearing to show that the continued existence of Rank’s criminal record “had in any way subjected him to an economic loss or personal embarrassment.”
“The fact that this ‘unsolved murder’ was the third in a series of similar outrages committed in the area and that since the defendant’s acquittal, yet another widow has been similarly dispatched has some significance to the necessity for retaining criminal records,” Dowling said.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, June 21, 1980:
JUDGE DISMISSES POLICE ABUSE SUIT
FILED BY MAN ACQUITTED OF ’79 HOMICIDE
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
A federal judge Friday threw out an $18,000 lawsuit against police and Dauphin County officials by a man acquitted of a 1979 homicide.
Gary W. Rank, 19, of Gratz, was acquitted in September of the slaying of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, on March 22, 1979. He brought a lawsuit against officials, saying that police “intentionally, willfully attempted to deprive and did deprive” him of his rights by conducting allegedly illegal searched without probable cause. He also charged he was not allowed to see an attorney.
But U. S. Middle District Court Judge R. Dixon Herman dismissed the suit because Rank’s attorney, Gilbert B. Abramson of Philadelphia, did not meet a deadline Tuesday to answer the defendants’ request for dismissal.
Herman said in an order that because a reply was not filed, “we will deem the motion to dismiss unopposed by plaintiff.”
The lawsuit named as defendants state Troopers John C. Balshy, Dean B. Shipe, Joseph A. VanNort and John J. Holtz, the state police, Dauphin County and its commissioners, John E. Minnich, Norman P. Hetrick and Stephen R. Reed, and County Prison Warden John Murray.
In the lawsuit, rank charged that police actions “constituted a conspiracy” to defame him and that officials “did illegally fabricate, despoil and destroy” evidence and unlawfully detained him.
He charged officials assaulted him and that during his six months in jail he “suffered extreme mental anguish, anxiety, physical assault and abuse, humiliation, depression, shock and other injuries.”
Rank claimed he was required to spend “substantial sums of money for medicines, medical attention, legal expenses, all to his great financial loss and detriment.”
In the nine-count lawsuit, Rank sought compensatory and punitive damages ad attorneys’ fees.
Rank was acquitted of criminal homicide at an eight-day trial. He denied killing Mrs. Horn, who had been his third-grade teacher. Mrs. Horn was beaten and strangled and he nude body was found in a pool of blood in her kitchen.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, May 7, 1981:
EX-DEFENDANT AGAIN SUES TROOPERS
WAS ACQUITTED IN 1979 SLAYING
A Gratz man acquitted in a 1979 slaying of an elderly widow has filed a second lawsuit against four state policemen who prosecuted him, claiming they fabricated evidence and conspired against him.
The lawsuit, which seeks several hundred thousand dollars in compensatory and punitive damages, originally was filed in Commonwealth Court, but Judge John A. MacPhail recently signed an order transferring it to Dauphin County Court.
Gary W. Rank of Gratz was acquitted in September 1979 of the slaying of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, on March 22, 1979. At an eight-day trial before Dauphin County Judge John C. Dowling. Rank denied killing Mrs. Horn, who had once been his third-grade teacher. Mrs. Horn was beaten and strangled and her nude body was found in a pool of blood in her kitchen.
This is the second lawsuit that Rank’s attorney had filed against the four state troopers and the state police. He previously filed a suit in U. S. Middle District Court claiming that his constitutional rights were violated by the officers. But Judge R. Dixon Herman dismissed it because Rank’s attorney, Gilbert B. Abramson of Philadelphia, did not meet a deadline to answer the defendants’ request for a dismissal.
The federal lawsuit also named Dauphin County commissioners and then-county prison Warden John Murray as defendants.
After Rank’s acquittal, he also attempted to get the court to expunge the record, but Dowling refused stating, “A verdict so contrary to evidence, while it must be accepted legally, cannot in all conscience bind the presiding judge.” He added that he is totally unconvinced of Gary Rank‘s innocence” in the death of Mrs. Horn.”
As in the previous lawsuit, the troopers named as defendants are John C. Balshy, Dean B. Shipe, Joseph VanNort and John J. Holtz.
The eight-count complaint, filed by Abramson, alleges that the troopers violated Rank’s constitutional rights and that search warrants were obtained without probable cause. The troopers are accused of assault and battery and of wrongfully incarcerating Rank for six months while he was waiting for trial.
During that prison time, Rank claims, he suffered “extreme mental anguish, physical assault and abuse, humiliation, depression, shock and other injuries” as well as financial loss. He accuses the state police of failing to train its officers.
Rank claims that the troopers conspired to defame him with intent of damaging him and his reputation without reasonable grounds. He adds that he wasn’t able to discover the conspiracy “until shortly before and during the trial of this case.”
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, October 14, 1982:
TROOPERS DEFEND PADLOCKING
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
A murdered woman’s home, where a Gratz man says police falsified events in an effort to convict him, was padlocked by state troopers to prevent anyone from tampering with the scene, a commonwealth attorney said yesterday.
The statement came on the opening day of trial on a U. S. Middle District Court suit filed by Gary W. Rank, 22, who was acquitted in Dauphin County Court of charges that he killed 68-year-old Helen Elizabeth Horn, by strangulation and beating.
Rank filed the suit against the state police who investigated the case, accusing them of fabricating evidence and depriving him of his constitutional rights.
In his opening statement, Rank’s lawyer, Gilbert Abramson, said state police were under “newspaper pressure” to solve the murder of Mrs. Horn and what he called similar crimes in the Gratz area in 1979.
Investigators found a sliver of class from a broken cellar window bearing a fingerprint, Abramson said. Believing the cellar was the point where the murderer entered the house, police made fingerprints of 25 Gratz residents and Rank’s matched the one on the glass, he added.
Troopers took more fingerprints each time they visited the house and made several searches of Rank’s home, but were unable to produce more evidence, Abrahamson said.
Every piece of evidence found was recorded in a police inventory except some blue fibers which police “claimed to have found at this window area,” Abraham said, adding that the unrecorded fibers were the basis for obtaining search warrants and eventually the arrest warrant for Rank.
Calling the fibers a “critical piece of evidence,” Abramson said there was no justification” for obtaining the search warrant because the “fibers didn’t exist.”
But Deputy Attorney General Francis X. O’Brien, representing the troopers, said “there are two sides to every story” and that the issue in the case is not the homicide, but “whether the state police acted within the law” while doing their job. “It is irrelevant who murdered Helen Horn,” O’Brien said.
State police “secured the crime scene,” O’Brien said. The house was “frozen in time as it was when the crime was discovered.”
The door to the house was padlocked to preserve the house as it was when the body was found, police said.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, October 15, 1982:
LAWYER QUESTIONS BASIS FOR WARRANT
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
Fibers, allegedly found at the scene of a slaying and used to obtain a search warrant of a suspect’s home, never really existed, an attorney said in U. S. Middle District Court yesterday.
The attorney, Gilbert Abramson, of Philadelphia, represents Gary W. Rank, who was acquitted of a slaying charge in September 1979. Abramson made the allegation in the second day of a trial of a civil suit filed by rank against state police, alleging they fabricated evidence against him.
Rank, 22, of Gratz, was acquitted by a Dauphin County Court jury, of charges that he strangled and beat to death Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, also of Gratz.
Rank seeks more than $90,000 in damages from retired Cpl. John C. Balshy, Troopers Dean B. Shipe and John J. Holtz and the estate of state police Sgt. Joseph VanNort, who led the investigation.
Abramson said there is nothing in a state police crime laboratory report about fibers which Shipe testified he obtained from a broken window in the cellar of the victim’s home.
An affidavit for a search warrant of Rank’s home states in part that police planned to look for blue clothing to match fibers obtained by police, but the report of substances tested by the lab does not mention blue fibers, Abramson said.
Abramson asked Joseph Kleinfelter, Dauphin County chief deputy district attorney, who prosecuted Rank, whether crime lab would have needed the fibers to compare with clothing taken from Rank’s house.
Kleinfelter said the material believed to be fibers actually was not needed for a laboratory test because they turned out to be “cat hairs.”
“You mean because they never existed,” Abramson said.
He then asked whether a false statement to obtain a search warrant could cause a judge to refuse to allow the evidence to be introduced at trial.
“In Pennsylvania today, a material misstatement of fact need not result in suppression [of evidence] if there is independent, probable cause” to justify searching the premises, Kleinfelter said.
Kleinfelter said the affidavit states Mrs. Horn had been “brutally murdered” and that other evidence found included a piece of the broken window which bore Rank’s fingerprint, and, “if that affidavit had stopped right then and there….
Abramson interrupted to object, and Judge R. Dixon Herman did not permit Kleinfelter to finish his answer.
The prosecutor testified later, however, that he believes the fingerprint was sufficient basis for obtaining a warrant.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, October 20, 1982:
FORMER TROOPER TESTIFIES IN RANK CASE
SAYS HE NEVER RECEIVED LAB REPORT
By Janis L Wilson, Staff Writer
A former state policeman testified in U. S. Middle District Court yesterday that he never received a laboratory report on a key piece of evidence in a 1979 murder case.
Retired Cpl. John C. Balshy testified he obtained blue fibers from a windowsill in the Gratz home of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, who was strangled and beaten March 22, 1979.
Gary W. Rank, 22, also of Gratz, was charged win the case, but a Dauphin County Court jury acquitted him. Rank subsequently filed suit in federal court against Balshy, troopers Dean B. Shipe and John Holtz, and the estate of Joseph VanNort, who headed the investigation.
The fibers were important to the case because they were the basis for a warrant to search Rank’s home, plaintiff’s attorney Gilbert Abramson said. Abrahamson has alleged, however, that the fibers, which police attempted to match with Rank’s clothing, never existed.
However, Balshy testified he stored the fibers in an evidence locker at the state police laboratory and that they still exist.
Shipe testified he also found blue fibers, but they turned out to be cat hairs, and Rank’s attorney in the criminal case, John J. Kradsig Jr., said blue fibers were not among the commonwealth’s evidence he was given to examine before the trial.
Balshy said he went to the Horn house with Shipe, his former student, on March 26, 1979 — three days after the body was discovered. “I went with trooper Shipe as a mentor, as a teacher, and also probably as a second pair of eyes,” Balshy said. “We were together most of the time, but I wasn’t his shadow.
Balshy said it was during that visit that he found the fibers on a cellar windowsill and attached them to “rubber lifter,” which is an adhesive backed for securing fingerprints.
The retired office said he showed the material to Janice Roadcap, who works in the police chemistry laboratory, and that she confirmed they were blue fibers. He said he took the lifters back with him and stored them in an evidence locker.
Balshy said he made no written record about finding the fibers. “I was not an officer assigned to the case…. I didn’t have to make a report, so I didn’t,” he said.
Balshy said he never saw a report of a laboratory analysis of the fibers and that he does not know if they were found to be of the same substance as clothing.
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From the Harrisburg Telegraph, October 21, 1982:
MAN’S SUIT ALLEGES STATE OLICE FABRICATED EVIDENCE AGAINST HIM
CHEMIST SAYS SHE EXCLUDED FIBER EXAMINATION FROM REPORT
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
Evidence in a criminal case was examined by a state police chemist but never mentioned in her report, according to testimony in a federal civil trial yesterday.
Janice Roadcap, a chemist and criminologist in the state police crime laboratory, testified in U. S. Middle District Court she saw blue fibers which were taken from the home of Helen Elizabeth Horn, a 68-year-old Gratz women who was found strangled and beaten March 23, 1979.
The fibers were the basis for a warrant to search the home of Gary W. Rank, 22, of Gratz, according to Rank’s attorney Gilbert Abramson. Rank was charged with murder but later was acquitted and filed suit against the state police, alleging they fabricated evidence against him.
Abraham said state police swore they had found blue fibers on a windowsill of the of the Horn home for clothing which might match the fibers. Abramson told the jury in his opening statement the fibers never existed.
Roadcap testified Cpl. John C. Balshy, a defendant in the civil suit, brough adhesive fingerprint cards, called lifts, to her which contained some fibers she examined under a microscope. None of Roadcap’s reports of evidence she studied mention the blue lifters, she said.
Roadcap said she only made written reports on items given to her formally as evidence. She said representatives of other sections of the crime lab, such as the fingerprint and photography section in which Balshy worked until he retired last year, “will just walk over” to the chemistry section and use a microscope or ask her to quickly look at an item.
That was the case with the fibers on the lifts, Roadcap said. “I remember seeing the lifts that Cpl. Balshy brough over that contained fibers,” she said. “I told him they looked like blue fibers on the lifts and I gave the lifts back to him,” she added.
During Rank’s criminal trial in Dauphin County Court, Roadcap testified she had never seen blue fibers. “I received clothing made of blue material from which I took fibers, but I never received blue fibers,” she testified at the time.
However, in the civil trial she said she had not interpreted the question to include the kind of informal examination she gave to the fibers brought by Balshy. She added that if she had found blue fibers on any other piece of evidence in the murder case she would have asked Balshy to give back the lifts for further examination.
Roadcap said she did look for fibers on other pieces of evidence but did not need to have the lifts to compare them because she remembered the characteristics of the fibers Balshy showed her.
Roadcap, who said she examined 5,000 pieces of evidence formally each year in addition to the informal tests tests she does, said she remembered the fibers provided by Balshy were dark blue and of a fine texture. She said clothing obtained from Rank, which was never linked to the crime, was obviously a lighter color.
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From the Harrisburg Telegraph, October 22, 1982:
FEDERAL COURT TESTIMONY CONTINUES HERE
TROOPER SAYS RANK WASN’T DENIED CHANCE TO TALK TO LAWYER
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
State police did not prevent a murder suspect from seeing an attorney, nor attempt to questioned the suspect after arraignment, a trooper has testified in U. S. Middle District Court.
Trooper John J. Holtz testified he disagrees with a defense attorney who said he waited 90 minutes at state police Troop H headquarters and eventually left without seeing his client, Gary W. Rank.
Rank, 22, of Gratz, was acquitted of the March 22, 1979, strangulation death of his neighbor, Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68. He filed suit against Holtz and three other troopers, alleging they violated his constitutional rights to see an attorney and fabricated evidence against him.
Holtz and another defendant, Sgt. Joseph VanNort, went to Rank’s home about 3:30 p. m. the day of his arrest. Rank was immediately taken before a district justice and formally told his rights and then was driven to Troop H headquarters for fingerprinting and photographing, Holtz said.
Rank’s attorney in the criminal case, John J. Krafzig Jr., has testified he was told he would be able to see Rank after the processing, but that he grew tired of waiting and left.
Holtz said rank was permitted to see his father and to make phone calls and at one point the troopers bought him a soda as they waited for another trooper to arrive from a trip to another county to make the prints and photos.
Holtz added that he informed Rank that his attorney was there, but that Rank said nothing.
When the police arrived at Rank’s home that day, they carried with them arrest and search warrants, Holtz said. The officers interviewed Rank for up to 90 minutes, asking where he was the night Mrs. Horn was killed, Holtz said. Then they searched the house, but during that entire time did not tell Rank they planned to arrest him, Holtz said. Filing a criminal complaint and obtaining an arrest warrant “does not necessarily mean you serve the warrant,” he said.
The troopers “certainly would have wanted to hear” Rank’s story. Holtz said, “Gary might have had a very logical explanation” of why his fingerprint was found in the cellar of the victim’s home and on a piece of broken glass from a basement window, the trooper said.
However, Holtz said Rank’s story “did not make sense to us” and he was arrested. At his trial, Rank testified he had pushed the window open to let in one of Mrs. Horn’s cats and that the print inside the basement might have been made four or five years earlier when he was collecting newspapers for a Boy Scout paper drive.
Holtz testified that he was aware that the slayings of two other elderly women in northern Dauphin County were unsolved at the time of Mrs. Horn’s death, but that he did not remember reading newspaper accounts that Rank’s attorney, Gilbert Abramson, contends pressured state police into making an unjustified arrest.
In earlier testimony, state police chemist Janice Roadcap testified that defendant John C. Balshy, a retired police corporal, brought her some adhesive fingerprint cards, called lifts, which contained some blue fibers she examined under a microscope. None of her reports of evidence mention those fibers, she said.
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From the Harrisburg Telegraph, October 23, 1982:
CIVIL SUIT TESTIMONY: PRODDED TO CONFESS, RANK SAYS
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
Gary W. Rank, acquitted in the slaying of a 68-year-old neighbor, yesterday again denied his involvement in the crime but said state police urged him to confess.
Rank, 22, of Gratz, testified in the civil trial in his U. S. Middle Court suit against four officers who investigated the March 22, 1979, strangulation of Helen Elizabeth Horn.
Rank alleges police violated his right to see an attorney and fabricated evidence against him in the case, which culminated in an acquittal by a Dauphin County Court jury.
Rank testified state Trooper Thomas Santai asked him to go to the Lykens Barracks to have his fingerprints recorded. “He didn’t tell me what for,” Rank said, adding he voluntarily allowed the prints to be made.
On April 24, defendants Sgt. Joseph VanNort and Trooper John Holtz went to his home, read him his rights, and questioned him about where he was the night Horn was killed, Rank said.
While other troopers were searching his house, Rank was placed under arrest and driven to a district justice’s office, Rank said. He quoted VanNort as saying, “Why don’t you confess, Gary, because we have your fingerprints…. You’re going to get convicted anyhow.”
Rank said, “I kept my mouth closed.”
VanNort asked rank if he killed Mrs. Horn, and he said he did not, Rank testified.
After arraignment, rank was taken to state police Troop H headquarters. Rank said VanNort “was asking me if I would confess. It would be a lot easier on you.” Rank said he also said VanNort told him. “We’ve got the evidence on you and you’re going to be convicted.”
Rank said VanNort left and Holtz came into the room, using a “different approach.” Rank testified Holtz said, “You’re young Gary. You have a future ahead of you. Maybe we can get you on third degree murder. Maybe you went in there to rob her and she surprised you.” He said Holtz told him that under those circumstances he would be out of jail in seven years.
“I mostly kept my mouth shut or answered ‘no’ to the questions,” Rank said. “They said, ‘We have your fingerprints. We’re going to convict you.”
Rank’s attorney in the criminal trial, John J. Kratzig Jr., has testified he wanted 90 minutes at Troop H headquarters, but was never permitted to see his client. Rank testified VanNort fold him during that time, “You attorney’s outside, but he ain’t gonna do you any good.” The trooper later said, “Your attorney just left. That’s how much he cares about your case,” Rank said.
Shortly before he was taken to Dauphin County Prison, Rank said, Holtz came to him and asked if he had “anything to say to me. This is the last chance I’m going to be able to help you.”
After a preliminary hearing, rank was handcuffed and his feet shackled as he walked toward a police car, with VanNort and Holtz behind him. Rank said, “They were, like, pushing me, rushing me to get into the car,” when he stumbled and his head struck the top of the car, the witness said.
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From the Harrisburg Telegraph, October 26, 1982:
RANK SAYS LAWYER URGED HIM TO SUE TROOPERS
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
A Gratz man has testified in federal court that the attorney who won his acquittal on a murder charge urged him to sue four state troopers who investigated the slaying.
Gary W. Rank, 22, was found innocent by a Dauphin County Court jury in the March 22, 1979, strangulation of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, also of Gratz. Rank filed suit against John J. Holtz, Joseph VanNort, Dean B. Shipe and John C. Balshy, alleging they violated his right to see his attorney and that they fabricated evidence against him.
Questioned by Assistant Attorney General Francis X. O’Brien, representing the state police, Rank said he did not know if he said anything to officers after his arrest that he would not have said if he had spoken with his lawyer, John J. Krafsig Jr.
Krafsig has testified he waited 90 minutes to see Rank, but was told that his client was being fingerprinted and photographed. Eventually, Krafzig said, he left without talking to Rank.
Rank said he decided to file the U. S. Middle Court lawsuit because Krafzig said there were “a lot of things that didn’t add up in this case.” Rank said Krafzig “felt there were too many inconsistencies on the state troopers’ part as to fibers and prints.”
Krafzig has testified that evidence turned over to the defense in the murder case did not include fibers allegedly taken from the Horn home. Police obtained a warrant to search Rank’s home for clothing which might match the fibers, though none was found, according to testimony in the civil case.
Further, Rank’s attorney in the civil suit, Gilbert Abramson, has said state police planted his client’s fingerprint in the Horn home because they had no suspect and were under pressure from the news media to solve the crime.
Rank has alleged in his suit that he was assaulted and battered. he testified that VanNort shoved him into a police car after a preliminary hearing at which he was handcuffed and shackled at the ankles. O’Brien said that if an assault had occurred, “you would have suffered some sort of injuries or required stitches or something.”
“It wasn’t done intentionally,” rank testified, acknowledging that he was not touched by police at any other time.
Rank is seeking damages for medical expenses. “You never sought any medical attention, did you Gary?” O’Brien asked. “No.” Rank said.
Rank testified he voluntarily allowed his fingerprints to be taken. Rank said his wife, then his fiancee, was working for the state at the time of the investigation and that he knew that 24 other Gratz-area residents had been asked to give their fingerprints.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, October 27, 1982:
WITNESS SAYS RANK FINGERPRINTS WERE TRANSFERRED TO EVIDENCE
A Gratz man whose fingerprints are on two items used as evidence in a 1979 murder trial did not touch the objects, according to a New York City fingerprint specialist who testified yesterday in U. S. Middle District Court.
Instead, the fingerprints of Gary W. Rank, 22, were transferred from other surfaces and placed on the evidence, according to the specialist, Salvatore Nicosia. Rank was acquitted of a murder charge in the March 22, 1979, slaying of Helen Elizabeth Horn, and is suing three state troopers and a retired state police corporal for allegedly falsifying evidence against him.
A key piece of evidence was a piece of glass from a broken cellar window, which police believe was the killer’s point of entry to the house, according to testimony in the civil trial. Trooper Dean B. Shipe and now-retired state police Cpl. John C. Balshy, two of the defendants, testified that rank’s print was found on that glass. The other two defendants in the suit are Troopers John J. Holtz and Joseph A. VanNort.
But Nicosia said the print “was placed on that piece of glass with [fingerprint] lifting tape, in one operation.” Nicosia said he questioned the validity of the evidence because no photograph was made of the print before protective tape was placed over it, contrary to routine procedure.
A piece of tape that convers the print extends beyond the glass, Nicosia said. “On the tape, ridges of print can be seen. The same black ridges continue into the piece of tape.
“The ridges extend past the glass,” Nicosia said. “I finally formed an opinion that that print could have only gotten onto that piece of glass” if it had been placed on the tape and then transferred to the broken window, he said.
In earlier testimony, Nicosia said the second fingerprint used as evidence against Rank in the criminal trial trial also was “planted” on a cellar door frame with a hinge lift,” Nicosia said. A hinge lift is a device used by police to remove a fingerprint from an object for analysis.
Nicosia, who has been a fingerprint analyst for 18 years, said that he never before saw a transplanted print and that in his testimony at numerous trials he never said that a print was planted.
However, Nicosia said the position of the print of a right little finger, identified as Rank’s, is inconsistent with a print being placed there naturally by touching the cellar door.
Shipe, a state police finger-printer, testified at the criminal trial that the “fingerprint found by him and the smudge above it were consistent with being from the same hand,” Nicosia said.
“Although the smudges don’t have enough ridges for identification, this on is the tip of a finger and other is the side of the next finger,” Nicosia said. “The positions are horizontal, but the retrieved on [used as evidence against rank], is perpendicular. It is highly impossible for the same hand to be in two positions at the same time.”
Further, Nicosia said, a photograph of the area where the print was found shows a “distinct line above it. It doesn’t appear elsewhere…. Something was placed on here which left that line.” Nicosia said the line could have been created by placing a hinge lift bearing a fingerprint and powder on the door frame and then removing it.
Other bases for Nicosia’s contention that the print was planted were the appearance o fingerprint powder around the print and testimony by defendant Balshy, a retired state police fingerprint expert, that two lifts were taken from the print.
Balshy testified the print was found on a routine check of the Horn house 40 days after the crime. “I have never found it to be possible to raise two lifts from a latent print 40 days later,” Nicosia said.
In dusting for fingerprints, police make broad strokes with powdered brushes to cover a large area, Nicosia said. But “It is very hard to answer in my mind why there is so much powder” on one part of the door frame and none in another.”
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, October 29, 1982:
JUDGE DISMISSES PART OF RANK SUIT
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
State police did not use excessive force against a murder suspect in 1979, but a jury will have to decide whether officers planted evidence against him, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
U. S. Middle District Court Judge R. Dixon Herman dismissed part of the lawsuit filed by Gary W. Rank, 22, Gratz, who was found innocent of killing Helen Elizabeth Horn, his 68-year-old neighbor. Rank sued four state troopers, alleging they fabricated evidence against him and violated his civil rights.
After Rank’s attorney, Gilbert Abramson of Philadelphia, rested his case, Assistant Attorney General Francis X. O’Brien Jr. asked the judge to rule in the defendant’s favor.
Rank testified that when he was walking from a preliminary hearing on the murder charge with his hands and feet shackled, Sgt. Joseph VanNort, a defendant, pushed him into a police car, causing him to strike his head, and slammed the door on his legs.
O’Brien said “a mere accident” doesn’t constitute depriving a person of his civil rights. “Gary didn’t tell us how he could see behind him that it was Sgt. VanNort” who allegedly pushed him, the defendants’ attorney added.
“There is no evidence whatsoever of any force… He didn’t seek any medical attention,” O’Brien said. But Abramson said there is is to requirement that a person consult a doctor to file an assault and battery suit.
Abramson said that although police are permitted to use reasonable force to control a suspect, there has been “no testimony he [Rank] resisted in any way or gave any problem.”
Abramson said the jury should decide “whether it was necessary to bash Gary Rank‘s head onto the door of the car.”
Herman dismissed that portion of the lawsuit, saying, “I don’t think any jury bent on arriving at the truth” would conclude that undue force was used against Rank.
The judge also ruled that Rank was not unconstitutionally deprived of his right to see and attorney. John J. Krasig Jr., who represented Rank in the criminal trial, testified he waited 90 minutes while rank was being fingerprinted and photographed and eventually left without talking with his client.
“Krafsig was rather indignant and he thought it was his rights that were being violated,” O’Brien said, adding that rank never told officers he wanted to see an attorney.
Abrahamson, however, said Rank testified VanNort told him that his attorney had arrived but would do him no good because he was going to be convicted. When that kind of statement is made by an officer, Abrahamson said, “you no longer have the free, unfettered right to an attorney. What was Gary Rank supposed to do – stand up and say, ‘oh, yeah, Sgt. VanNort! I want to see him [the attorney] right now’…. That is not something we should expect to happen in a police station.”
Although he said there is “no evidence anyplace that [Defendant Trooper John J.] Holtz and VanNort fabricated evidence,” Herman said there has been sufficient testimony represented to justify jury consideration of that allegation.
Two New York finger-print specialists testified that Rank’s prints on a piece of glass from a broken window inside he cellar of the Horn home did not result from his placing his hand there, but had to have been planted.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, November 4, 1982:
DEFENSE RESTS CASE IN RANK’S LAWSUIT
The defense rested yesterday in the U. S. Middle District Court trial of a civil suit alleging two state troopers; a state police corporal, now retired; and a state police sergeant, now deceased, violated a murder suspect’s rights and fabricated evidence against him.
The suit was brought by Gary W. Rank, 22, of Gratz, who had been charged with murder in the March 22, 1979, slaying of a neighbor, 68-year-old Helen Elizabeth Horn, rank was found innocent by a Dauphin County jury.
Troopers John J. Holts and Dean B. Shipe and Cpl. John C. Balshy testified Tuesday that they did not know Rank until the murder investigation began. They also said they had no malice toward Rank and did not attempt to violate his rights.
The fourth defendant is Sgt. Joseph VanNort, who has since died. His estate is a party to the case.
The plaintiff contends police planted his fingerprints at the slaying scene because they had no suspect in the case and were under public pressure to solve the crime.
George Bonebreak, a finger-print consultant who worked for the FBI for 34 years, testified that evidence introduced in the case did not indicate that Rank’s prints were placed in the house artificially.
Bonebreak also contradicted testimony by fingerprint specialists who testified for the plaintiff. Bonebreak said he has been able to obtain prints 40 day after the were made, and sometimes could obtain two of them with adhesive finger-print-lifting devices.
Witnesses testifying for Rank have said that it is unlikely two prints could be obtained in that way and that, although it is impossible to tell how old a print is, it is unlikely a good one could be obtained after 40 days. That is the length of time that Shipe and Balshy said passed before they found Rank’s print inside the Horn home. Another of Rank’s prints was found the day after the slaying.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, November 5, 1982:
JUDGE DISMISSES CASE AGAINST ONE TROOPER
JURY BEGINS DELIBERATIONS IN RANK’S SUIT
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
Jury deliberations began yesterday in U. S. Middle District Court in the trial of a lawsuit in which a Gratz man alleges state police fabricated evidence against him in a 1979 slaying case.
The case was brought by Gary W. Rank, 22, who was found innocent in 1979 of the strangulation death of a 68-year-old Gratz widow, Helen Elizabeth Horn. Rank filed suit, alleging two state troopers; a state police corporal, now retired; and a state police sergeant, now deceased, fabricated evidence against him and violated his constitutional rights.
Judge R. Dixon Herman ruled there was insufficient evidence presented against Trooper John J. Holtz, a case investigator, to justify sending his case to the jury. Herman earlier had dismissed several issues in the case, ruling that Rank was not assaulted or denied his right to an attorney.
Remaining defendants in the case are Trooper Dean B. Shipe, a finger-print analyst; retired Cpl. John C. Balshy, a nationally known finger-print specialist; and Sgt. Joseph A. VanNort, the case agent whose estate was made a party to the suit after his death in 1981.
In his closing statement to the jury, Assistant Attorney General Francis X. O’Brien Jr. said two finger-print specialists who testified for Rank were paid a “combined total of $1,400 a day” and so were “honor-bound to do what they could for their client.”
Rank’s attorney, Gilbert Abrahamson of Philadelphia, said the men were entitled to fees and expenses, noting that they lose money when they are out of their offices. “Why would he [Vincent J. Scalice, one of the specialists] come here to lie against Balshy and Shipe? That’s the way they got evidence against Rank the first time,” Abrahamson said.
The defendants’ specialist witness, George Bonebreak, was paid $200 a day.
Both of the plaintiff’s specialists, Scalice and Salvatore Nicosia, both of New York, testified in the criminal trial and the civil suit. In the civil trial, they said Rank’s fingerprints, one on a piece of broker windowpane and one on a cellar door frame inside the Horn home, were placed there artificially.
The plaintiffs’ specialists testified that had never seen a “planted” print before. “How do you know it if you haven’t seen it?” O’Brien asked.
The plaintiffs’ specialists “reached their opinion and then looked for something to support the conclusion” so they would be hired to testified in this case, O’Brien said. “Scalice followed pretty much the same script as Mr. Nicosia: on the witness stand, he added.
O’Brien said Nicosia said that one way the print could have been planted in the cellar was with devices used for removing fingerprints from surfaces and preserving them for examination.
Nicosia said one way the alleged transplant could have been done was takin rank’s print on adhesive “rubber lifters,” transferring it to a “hinge lifter” and then sticking it onto the door frame, O’Brien said.
However, he added that both the rubber lifter and hinge lifter have sticky surfaces. If powder was used to make the print, a “tug of war” would occur and the print would be uneven and divided he said.
Abramson said there was no evidence that the prints were taken with powder. Ink could have been used as on standard fingerprint cards, he said.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, November 6, 1982:
RANK RIGHTS VIOLATED, JURY FINDS
JURY HERE RULES IN RANK’S FAVOR
by Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
The constitutional rights of a man tried in 1979 on a murder charge were violated, a U. S. Middle District Court jury determined yesterday.
The jury deliberated three hours before reaching that conclusion in a civil trial of a lawsuit brought by Gary W. Rank, 22, of Gratz. Rank was acquitted in Dauphin County Court of the beating and strangulation death of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, also of Gratz.
Although Rank also has charged that state police investigators in the case fabricated evidence against him, the jury will not make a determination on that question. Judge R. Dixon Herman said the jury will return Monday to decide what damages, if any, rank should receive.
The three remaining defendants in the suit are Trooper Dean B. Shipe; Sgt. Joseph A. VanNort, now deceased; and Cpl. John C. Balshy, now retired. Herman dismissed the case against a fourth defendant, Trooper John J. Holtz, on the basis of insufficient evidence.
Rank’s attorney, Gilbert Abramson of Philadelphia, said in his closing statement Thursday that the investigators were under pressure from news organizations to solve the Horn slaying because two other elderly women in the area had been found naked and beaten to death.
Francis X. O’Brien Jr., chief counsel for the defendants, pointed out that one of those killings occurred after the Horn slaying and that the state police had concluded that the slayings were not connected. He added that no evidence of news media pressure was presented.
Abramson said a number of routine police procedures were not followed in this case. For example, witnesses testified that because fingerprints can be planted on a crime scene, police routinely take a photograph of the exact size of the print and one showing where it was found before placing tape over the print to preserve it, to avoid allegations the evidence was fabricated. Shipe, who obtains prints for the state police, testified he did not do that in this investigation.
“When you get something that can be relocated as easily as a finger-print can, you have to be triply careful when somebody’s liberty is at stake,” Abramson said.
The plaintiff contends Rank’s prints — one on a piece of broken windowpane and one on a door frame in the basement of the victim’s home — were planted by state police.
Balshy, a nationally known fingerprint specialist, testified he has experimented with transplanting prints so he can recognize when that kind of fabrication has occurred. Shipe said he has never seen it done.
Abramson said that although the body was discovered on March 23, 1979, along with Rank’s print on the glass, the print inside the house was not found until two days before a hearing to determine whether there was enough evidence to hold rank for trial.
The defendants were motivated to plant rank’s prints, Abramson said, because “they knew he wouldn’t be held for trial” on the evidence they had.
Balshy testified the print inside the house was discovered 40 days after the crime when he, accompanied by Shipe, went into the cellar with bright lights. O’Brien said Deputy District Attorney Joseph Kleinfelter had asked the police to make movies of the scene.
Balshy said the print was found as he shined the lights in the cellar, but Abramson said a light bulb hung directly above the print as that no fingerprint powder appears above or below the print as it would if police had dusted the area in the usual manner.
Witnesses for the plaintiff said it is unlikely a print could be found after 40 days because it would have dried out.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, November 10, 1982:
PRISON LIFE WAS NIGHTMARE, RANK SAYS
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
Gary W. Rank feared assault by other inmates at Dauphin County Prison when he was being held on a murder charge and still has nightmares about the incident, he testified yesterday in federal court.
Rank, 22, of Gratz, testified in the U. S. Middle District Court trial on a lawsuit he filed against state troopers who investigated the slaying of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, a Gratz widow. Rank was charged with the crime but acquitted by a Dauphin County Court jury.
The federal jury decided Friday that Rank’s constitutional rights were violated by Trooper Dean B. Shipe and retired Cpl. John C. Balshy, both of whom obtained and studied fingerprints in the case, and Sgt. Joseph A. VanNort, who has since died. The jury is now considering what amount of damages Rank will receive.
Rank testified that after one night in his cell, he was transferred from one of the maximum security cellblocks because a guard allegedly told him that all the other inmates in that section were black and wanted to kill him.
For the first two months of his confinement, he was not allowed outside and there was no window in his cell, Rank testified. He also said sanitary conditions in the prison were poor. “It stank in the prison most of the time,” he said.
Rank said he could not sleep well in prison because he knew the district attorney would seek the death penalty and because, rank said, roaches crawled over him.
“I was scared because I saw other inmates raped,” Rank said. “I feared every day that I might get jumped myself. I was touched a couple of times.” Rank said he also was “verbally assaulted” by homosexuals who made suggestions that were “vulgar and gross.”
After his release, Rank said, he was in a “state of depression.”
He said, “My nerves were shot at the age of 19. People used to talk to me before I went to jail. They wouldn’t give me the time of day after my arrest…. Most people still thought I was guilty of the crime.”
Rank said he spent most of his time in prison alone in his cell but that when he was released he never wanted to be alone. “I used to get shakes and chills” at the thought of prison, Rank said.
Besides the depression, Rank said, he has suffered loss of reputation. He said Harrisburg and Upper Dauphin County papers carried stories daily during the trial and that the Gratz-area paper published photographs of him in handcuffs and shackles.
Rank’s attorney, Gilbert Abramson, produced a bill from John J. Krafzig Jr., who represented rank during the criminal trial. The attorney’s fees and expenses totaled $17,333, which Rank said was paid by his family and his wife’s family. rank said he feels an obligation to reimburse them.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, November 11, 1982:
JURORS AWARD RANK $55,500
TROOPERS ORDERED TO PAY $55,500 TO EX-PRISONER
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
A federal court jury yesterday ordered the state police investigators of a 1979 death to pay $55,500 in damages to a Gratz man who was charged with murder and later acquitted.
The same U. S. Middle District Court jury determined last week that the civil rights of Gary W. Rank, 22, were violated by three state policemen who investigated the March 22, 1979, slaying of Helen Elizabeth Horn, a 68-year-old Gratz widow.
Rank filed suit against Trooper Dean B. Shipe, a fingerprint analyst; retired police Cpl. John C. Balshy, a nationally known fingerprint expert; Sgt. Joseph A. VanNort, who headed the investigation; and Trooper John Holtz, an investigator.
Judge R. Dixon Herman acquitted Holts of the allegations in the civil trial, saying too little evidence had been presented against him to warrant consideration by the jury.
Shipe, Balshy, and the estate of VanNort, who died since the investigation, each was ordered to pay $18,500 to rank; $13,500 of that as compensatory damages and the other $5,000 as punitive damages.
Herman also ruled that rank was not assaulted by VanNort. Rank claimed VanNort caused him to strike his head on a police car and then slammed the door on his shackled legs. The judge also concluded Rank had not been denied the right to counsel following his arrest, as the complaint alleges.
In the first part of the trial, the jury was allowed to consider several allegations against the officers, including whether they planted Rank’s fingerprints on the crime scene and obtained search and arrest warrants without justification.
However, the jury was asked only to determine whether Rank’s civil rights had violated and has not said what conclusions it reached in making that decision.
Rank testified that he was being questioned by state police and his home was being searched April 24, 1979, when TRW, Inc. called to offer him a job. He said he would have taken the position, which paid up to $2.93 more an hour, but was arrested that day in remained in dauphin County Prison until his acquittal the following September.
Rank returned to the job he had before the murder charge was lodged, and still works there as a fabric spreader.
Drexel University economist Andrew G. Verzilli said that if Rank had taken the TRW job he would have been paid $21,488 more than has received in his present position. Adding on raises which would have been granted since then, the TRW job would have meant $8,112 a year more in wages for Rank, Verzilli said.
Rank also hopes to recoup $17,333 paid by his family and his wife’s parents for his legal fees and expenses during the criminal trial.
Besides the out-of-pocket expenses, Rank concedes he is entitled to compensation as a result of emotional distress he suffered. However, he testified he had not seen a doctor or psychologist as a result of those alleged difficulties.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, December 1, 1982:
BOTH SIDES SEEKING NEW TRIAL IN RANK’S STATE POLICE LAWSUIT
By Janis L. Wilson, Staff Writer
Attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit Gary W. Rank won against a state trooper and two former state police investigators have asked a federal judge for a new trial.
A U. S. Middle District Court jury determined in November that rank’s constitutional rights had been violated by investigators in connection with the March 1979 strangulation of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68 a neighbor of his in Gratz.
Without saying which rights were violated, the jury awarded rank a total of $55,500 in compensatory and punitive damages. Defendants were retired Cpl. John C. Balshy, Trooper Dean B. Shipe and Sgt. Joseph A. VanNort, who headed the investigation and has since died.
Rank alleged Shipe, a fingerprint analyst and Balshy, a nationally known fingerprint specialist, planted his fingerprints in two places at the slaying scene. Rank also claimed search and arrest warrants were obtained against him without foundation.
His attorney, Gilbert Abramson, asked Judge R. Dixon Herman to increase the award or bring back the jury to retry the issue of damages.
However, Francis X. O’Brien Jr., chief counsel for the state police, asked the judge to grant a new trial, saying there was insufficient evidence to justify the verdict. Both attorneys said the judge made trial errors in allowing certain testimony and evidence to be admitted.
Abramson said the court erred in refusing to allow the jury to see 35 newspaper articles and recordings of broadcasts regarding Rank’s arrest, preliminary hearing and trial.
Abramson said O’Brien created a “misrepresentation” that the defendants were “personally going to pay any verdict or sum awarded by the jury,” when in fact a claim for the award would have been submitted to a state employees’ insurance fund.
Abramson said Herman should have told the jury that O’Brien’s statements that the “defendants and their families have been punished enough” by having to go through these trial proceedings” was improper comment.
Rank is “entitled” to reimbursement for the attorney’s fees he paid for the murder trial and for his “lost earnings during the five months he was in prison,” a total of about $22,000, Abramson said.
Rank had testified he was being arrested the day TRW Inc., called to offer him a job that paid $2.91 more an hour than the job he then held. An economist said that if Rank had taken that job he would have been paid $21,488 more than he has received in his present post.
“The jury’s total compensatory damage for the mental anguish and mental suffering and loss of dignity and life’s pleasures, having to go through a 10-day trial, being incarcerated for five months and the violation of his important constitutional rights was therefore $18,000,” Abramson said. It is clear the jury did not understand the significance of the damages suffered by plaintiff if they could assess all this damage at only $18,000.
Besides an increase in damages, rank is entitled under state law to a 10 percent-a-year increase in the compensatory damages award because the trial was delayed, Abramson said.
In addition, rank has asked the court to pay his fee, which is customary in civil rights litigation.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, April 27, 1983:
STATE COURT ORDERS CLEAR RECORD FOR RANK
By Ron Jury, Staff Writer
A state appellate court has ordered that the criminal record of a Gratz man acquitted in the murder of a woman in 1979 be erased.
The state Superior Court reversed Dauphin County Court Judge John C. Dowling and ordered that the record of Gary W. Rank be cleared.
A three-judge panel wrote, “We are compelled to find that the lower court abused its direction in refusing to grant appellant’s [Rank’s] petition.
The judges said the District Attorney’s Office, at a hearing in late 1979, “presented no compelling reason” to maintain Rank’s record.
“The commonwealth has presented no state law or law enforcement interest in the retention of appellant’s arrest record,” the court said in granting Rank’s appeal.
A jury found rank innocent of murder in September 1979 in the March 22, 1979, killing of Helen Elizabeth Horn, 68, also of Gratz.
Dowling presided at the eight day trial.
Rank was accused of entering Horn’s home March 22 and strangling and beating her. The woman’s nude body was found the next morning in a pool of blood with carpets and other material over her head and feet.
Rank denied the killing. He said he had no reason to kill her.
Much of the prosecution’s case centered on fingerprints, identified as Rank’s, found on a piece of broken glass from the cellar window and on the frame of a door from the cellar into the dining room where the body was found.
Rank said the fingerprint got on the cellar window window when he stopped in the alley by the Horn house two weeks before the slaying and put a cat in the cellar.
He said he had been in the house perhaps five years earlier on a scout paper drive and had taken a bundle of papers out of the basement.
Prosecution and defense experts disputed the fingerprint testimony.
After the trial, Rank asked the court to clear his record, but Dowling wrote, “A verdict so contrary to evidence, while it must be accepted legally, cannot in all good conscience bind the presiding judge.” he added that he was “totally unconvinced of Gary Rank’s innocence” in the death of Helen Horn.
Dowling also cited a Superior Court decision dealing with expungement of criminal records, stating the ruling “places the trial judge in the unique position of not only having the opportunity to comment on the jury’s verdict, but being obligated to do so.”
Although the appellate court set up a two-pronged standard to be used by judges at expungement hearings in 1978, its application was narrowed in a 1980 decision.
Under the initial standard, the court said if the prosecution proved a prima facie case, then the defendant had the burden of demonstrating non-culpability at a hearing.
The court said the application of the standard is not the same when a jury has acquitted a defendant. The court said it would be contrary to one of the basic tenets of the criminal justice system to make the former defendant prove his non-culpability at an expungement hearing.
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From the Harrisburg Patriot, December 8, 1983:
RANK’S LATE APPEAL NOTICE RAPPED, EXTENSION DENIED
A Gratz man may have lost his opportunity to appeal a federal court ruling denying him a new trial because his one-paragraph appeal notice was filed a day late.
U. S. Middle District Judge R. Dixon Herman denied Gary W. Rank‘s request for an extension of the November 14 deadline to file a notice of appeal. The notice was filed November 15.
Both Rank, 23, and three state police officers seek to overturn Herman’s September 29 order dismissing both parties’ new-trial requests. For different reasons, both sides are appealing a 1982 federal jury verdict that ordered the officers to pay rank $55,500 in damages.
Rank was charged in a 1979 murder but was later acquitted. He sued the officers investigation the case, claiming they violated his constitutional rights. The federal court jury agreed.
On October 31, the officers filed notice of their intent to appeal Herman’s decision to deny a new trial. Rank was then given until November 14 to file a similar appeal to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Herman rejected arguments by Rank’s attorney, Gilbert Abramson of Philadelphia, that the one day filing delay was “excusable or good cause because the messenger delivering the notice of appeal had car problems.
Abramson “chose to wait until the last minute, which has been his custom throughout these proceedings, and now the weight of this error rests solely upon his shoulders,” Herman said.
Rank’s appeal notice was delivered to Best Services, a Philadelphia filing and subpoena service, in the early afternoon of November 14. The messenger made a delivery in Blue Bell and then had car trouble. He did not arrive in Harrisburg until after the clerk’s office closed.
Rank and his attorney “waited until the last day, indeed, nearly the last hour, to attempt to file the simply worded notice of appeal,” Herman said. “When car trouble arose, neither the messenger nor [Rank’s] counsel attempted to reach the clerk’s office and arrange to file the notice after closing hours.”
Abramson’s office has asked the clerk’s office to stay open late on other occasions, Herman said. “Moreover, the messenger could have delivered the notice of appeal to the clerk of court’s home. This was not even attempted.”
In his September rejection of new-trial requests, Herman denied the officers’ request claims that the court made errors that influenced the 1982 verdict. Herman also rejected Rank’s arguments that he was compensated improperly and entitled to a new trial on damages.
After a lengthy two-part trial last year, the federal jury first found that Rank’s constitutional rights had been violated by the state policemen who investigated the March 22, 1979, beating death of Helen Elizabeth Horn, a 68-year old Gratz widow.
In the second part, the jury awarded Rank $18,500 from each of the officers: Trooper Dean B. Shipe, a fingerprint analyst; retired Cpl. John C. Balshy, a nationally known fingerprint analyst; and the estate of Sgt. Joseph A. VanNort.
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News articles from the on-line resources of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.
For an interesting postlude on the police officers who were involved in the fingerprinting, see: