Carter homicide trial delayed due to appeal
With a jury assembled and waiting Monday morning, Jan. 13, in Common Pleas Court, the homicide trial for a Chester County man charged in the May 2021 shooting death of a New Castle man in Butler County was put on hold due to an appeal.
Paris E. Carter, 26, of Downingtown, is charged by state police with homicide in the May 17 death of David A. Hines, who was 38.
Before the trial was supposed to start, assistant district attorney Robert Zanella played a recording of a call Carter made from prison to a relative and tried to have it entered as evidence to use in the trial. He argued that the recording reveals that Carter has “consciousness of guilt.”
Judge Timothy McCune denied the request, saying the recording was more prejudicial than probative.
Zanella said he had prepared an appeal of the decision to file with Superior Court. He said the recording was crucial evidence.
McCune asked why the recording wasn’t presented earlier.
Zanella said he lost the recording between April 2023 and December 2024, and he had to sort through 200 other recorded phone calls to find it.
McCune said Superior Court will have to issue a ruling on the appeal, which could take a year.
Defense attorney Matthew Ness then asked McCune to set bail for Carter.
McCune instructed him to file a motion for bail.
After the attorneys left the courtroom, McCune summoned the jury and explained what had happened. He said he ruled in previous hearings that three calls Carter made from prison can be used as evidence, but other recorded calls were more prejudicial that probative.
The district attorney’s office believes its case would be substantially handicapped without the recording presented Monday, McCune said.
He said a panel of three Superior Court judges will hear the appeal, but neither he nor the assembled jurors will hear the case after the appeal is resolved: He said he is retiring at the end of this year and a new jury will be selected to hear the case.
Carter has been held in the Butler County Prison without bail since he was arrested May 26, 2021, in Philadelphia.
Carter, his brother Dante Carter, Hines and another man, who was driving, were traveling in Hines’ car from Pittsburgh to New Castle with Hines in the front passenger seat and Paris Carter in the seat behind the driver when police said he shot Hines in the head.
The driver said he struggled to maintain control of the vehicle after the shooting and pulled over and then Paris Carter began driving, according to testimony given in Carter’s preliminary hearing.
A passerby later discovered Hines’ body in the still running vehicle that was wedged into a hillside along Portersville Road in Muddy Creek Township.
