CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A judge on Tuesday imposed the death penalty on a 32-year-old man convicted of the execution-style murders of a couple during a break-in attempt at their family-owned car lot.
Joseph McAlpin will pay the law’s ultimate penalty in the 2017 shooting deaths of Michael Kuznik and Trina Tomola inside Mr. Cars on East 185th Street.
Common Pleas Court Judge Brian J. Corrigan, who presided over the three-week trial, condemned McAlpin to death row after the jury on Thursday recommended the death penalty in the trial’s second phase.
McAlpin, who is believed to be the first defendant to represent himself in a death-penalty trial in Cuyahoga County’s history, thanked Corrigan and the team of county prosecutors for their patience with him during the trial. He also apologized to his own family for what he called “ignorant” declarations during trial that he would only accept full liberty or death.
McAlpin offered no words to the family of Kuznik and Tomola, who packed the courtroom’s gallery but chose not to address the court.
“My fight’s going to continue,” McAlpin, handcuffed in an orange jumpsuit, said. “I know people are tired of hearing that, but there’s not much else I can say.”
Cleveland City Councilman Michael Polensek, whose ward encompassed the Collinwood neighborhood where the car lot sat for 40 years, called McAlpin a “demonic killer” who rocked the entire neighborhood and the business community across Cleveland.
“This was never about retribution,” Polensek said. “This was about justice.”
After the hearing, Polensek told reporters that he felt death by lethal injection was “too good” for McAlpin.
“As far as I’m concerned he should be burned at the stake for what he did to that family,” Polensek said.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley read a statement from Kuznik’s family after the hearing in which they thanked law enforcement and the jurors who heard the case.
“Our hearts will be forever broken, and we are greatly relieved that justice has been served,” O’Malley said, reading from the statement.
Prosecutors put forth no additional evidence in the second phase of trial, and McAlpin called a handful of family members to testify on his behalf.
The jury reached its recommendation after about deliberating for less than an hour.
McAlpin has maintained his innocence throughout both phases of the trial.
Corrigan on Tuesday noted that McAlpin lived a difficult childhood. He shot himself in the leg with his mother’s gun when he was 5 years old, Corrigan said. He suffered seizures after he was hit in the head with a brick as a 12-year-old, and found his mother’s body after she overdosed on heroin when he was 19. He also suffered sexual abuse.
Corrigan found that mitigation was not enough to outweigh the aggravated circumstances of the killings.
The car lot, which had been owned by members of Kuznik’s family since it opened in April 1975, closed after the killings.
“These crimes slowly eat at a community,” O’Malley said. “It’s through sentences like this that jurors, who are composed of people from our community, are just saying ‘we’ve had enough.’ People in this county have had enough.”
Prosecutors relied on DNA evidence, cellphone records and testimony from a man who admitted to helping McAlpin carry out what was supposed to be a simple burglary to steal cars and titles on April 14, 2017.
It was Good Friday and the couple, who had Easter baskets for their children in the back of their car parked outside the lot, were closing up for the day, prosecutors said. Those baskets remained in the backseat as the car sits in the custody of Cleveland police as evidence, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors say McAlpin entered Mr. Cars and shot Kuznik, 47, in the showroom. The bullet grazed Kuznik’s face before he ran to a backroom, where McAlpin stood over him and shot him in the top of his head, prosecutors say.
Investigators found McAlpin’s DNA in Kuznik’s back pocket, where prosecutors said he had put cash from two car sales earlier in the day. The cash was not found on Kuznik’s body.
Tomola, 46, tried to run from the building during the robbery. McAlpin shot her in the back of her head, near an exit, prosecutors said.
McAlpin also shot and killed the couple’s Doberman Pinscher, Axel, disabled the business’s surveillance system and stole a BMW sedan, prosecutors said.
Andrew Keener told jurors that he participated in the crime alongside McAlpin.
Keener pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and is set to be sentenced after McAlpin’s trial wraps up.
McAlpin’s brother, Jerome Diggs, has pleaded not guilty to charges including aggravated murder, and his case is pending.
Source: cleveland.com, Cory Shaffer, May 21, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde