Chapter 13 – Stymied
Friday September 23, 1966
Defense witnesses called on Friday’s session included Sheriff Claude Hartman; Richard P. Sneeder, York, a private investigator hired by the defense to talk to some of the witnesses in the case; Gerald Lengel, Richland; Ronald Weidman, and John Shanfelder, Newmansiown, who had been drinking with Sites prior to the death of Mrs. Layser.
Sheriff Hartman was called to establish the fact that Sites was taken to the Norristown State Hospital for a psychological examination.
Sneeder told of conversations with Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Parson, Newmanstown, who had testified for the commonwealth.
They were present in the Newmanstown hotel part of the time Sites had been drinking there prior to Mrs. Layser’s death. Sneeder’s testimony showed a discrepancy between what he said Mr. and Mrs. Parson told him and what they testified. As commonwealth witnesses they said Sites had expressed a desire for female companionship.
Lengel, Weidman, and Shanfelder testified concerning drinking on the part of Sites and its apparent effects on him.
The final defense witness was District Attorney Alvin B. Lewis Jr. who was called for the apparent purpose of attempting to prove that the constitutional rights of Sites were not properly and adequately protected after he became a prime suspect in the investigation.
The defense rested its case at 4:10 p.m. Friday.
Dr. Wilbur Lutz, a psychiatrist and assistant superintendent of the Wernersville State Hospital, was withdrawn as a commonwealth rebuttal witness following objections by the defense.
The defense claimed that testimony by Dr. Lutz would violate the constitutional rights of the 23-year-old defendant.
Dr. Lutz, prior to being withdrawn from the witness stand, said the testimony he was about to give was based on an interview he had with Sites December 27, 1965, at the hospital. The defense contended that this was privileged information.
The Sites murder trial was in recess for the weekend, and was expected to go to the jury Monday afternoon. Closing summations by the attorneys were scheduled for Monday morning and Judge G. Thomas Gates was scheduled to instruct the jury Monday afternoon.
Altogether the defense put on 19 witnesses, while the commonwealth used 23 witnesses.
[Portions of this post were transcribed nearly verbatim from the Lebanon Daily News coverage of the trial written by James Shellhamer.]
Sidebar
As court adjourned for the day Friday afternoon, Judge Gales granted permission for the women of the jury to visit the beauty shop in the Lebanon Treadway Inn where the jury was being quartered when not in the courtroom. Because the jury could not be separated, the eight male jury members had to accompany them to the shop.
As the jury would continue to be sequestered over the weekend, Judge Gates also made arrangements for Protestant and Catholic services to be made available for the jury members on Sunday.
To help break the monotony of the sequestration, the jury was scheduled to be taken on a bus trip on Sunday to places of “historical interest”.
While the jurors were in the shop, Deputy Sheriff Warren Sheaf, who drove the jurors to and from the Municipal Building in the Civil Defense bus, overheard a comment from one of the other patrons to the effect that this represented “more taxpayers’ money down the drain”.
So Deputy Sheaf hastened to point out that the beauty shop visit was done entirely at the women jurors’ expense.
By the way, this became a common complaint in the county, and there were several letters to the editor published in the paper about the bills that taxpayers were expected to foot in order to give Sites a fair trial.
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