HARRISBURG, Pa. — A man from Pennsylvania has had yet another appeal for a new trial denied, having served 43 years of a life sentence for murder based largely on inconsistent testimonies from four jailhouse informants. The request was rejected last week by a panel of three judges from the Superior Court.

At 66 years old, Steve Szarewicz has insisted on his innocence for many years. His most recent appeal relied on two key points: firstly, that one of his accusers recanted his testimony to a private investigator back in 2016; and secondly, that the testimony of another informant in a different murder case contained significant discrepancies, which were noted by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as “problematic inconsistencies.”

Szarewicz was found guilty for the 1981 shooting of Billy Merriwether in a rural portion of Allegheny County. The jailhouse informants claimed Szarewicz confessed to them, yet three of those individuals eventually recanted their statements. Additionally, one inmate testified that the fourth informant fabricated his claims to settle personal scores.

Crucially, there was no physical evidence tying Szarewicz to the crime scene—no fingerprints, no eyewitness accounts, and no DNA evidence. During the jury’s deliberations, jurors expressed concerns to the judge regarding the lack of concrete evidence in the case.

In their recent decision, the Superior Court judges referenced a longstanding principle stating that without a “clear abuse of discretion,” appellate courts cannot authorize a new trial based solely on witnesses recanting their testimonies. As he currently represents himself, Szarewicz communicated via email from the State Correctional Institution-Houtzdale, announcing his intent to appeal this latest ruling to the state Supreme Court. “I am batting 1000 in the wrong direction. Story of my life,” he remarked.

The office of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala refrained from making a comment on the appeal. Legal expert Bruce Antkowiak, a law professor at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, deemed Szarewicz’s arguments regarding the jailhouse informants as rather unlikely to succeed in court. He noted that whenever a recanted statement is introduced, it falls on the trial court to assess the credibility of that statement, a determination that is rarely overturned at the appellate level.

Besides the request for a new trial, Szarewicz also contended that the judge in his original trial made errors while instructing the jury on the matter of the defendant’s intent to kill. He argues that this mistake should result in his first-degree murder conviction being changed to third-degree murder, a modification that would allow for a lighter sentence of 10 to 20 years instead of life imprisonment. The appeals court has indicated that Szarewicz is permitted to return to the county court to argue this particular point.