And your opinion is ??

[larrymeyer]

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/ne...8-1546785.html

Woman not guilty of attempted murder

By GARY WECKSELBLATT
The Intelligencer

As the jury foreman read each verdict, Patricia Loy reacted with a soft cry.

Her daughter Rochelle was found not guilty Monday of attempted criminal homicide and two counts of arson for trying to set fire to her Richland townhouse on Dec. 4 while her 4-year-old daughter slept upstairs.

But when the guilty verdicts were read — for risking catastrophe, endangering the welfare of a child and recklessly endangering another person — Patricia Loy rested her head and cried on the shoulder of her husband, Richard. Three days of testimony and a weekend of awaiting their daughter's fate had weighed heavily on the couple.

Rochelle Loy, 34, an administrative assistant at a pharmaceutical company, did not testify at the trial. She faces a maximum of 31/2 to seven years in prison. She burned the drapes in the living and dining rooms of her Forsythia Court townhouse and told a 911 operator she had tried to start a fire on her electric kitchen stove, but it went out.

After dismissing the jury, which deliberated for about 31/2 hours Friday and Monday, Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg called the verdict “right on the money.”

He denied the prosecution's request to increase Loy's bail from $100,000 to $500,000. Goldberg said “any objective observer” could see that thoug0h Loy failed more than once to set her house on fire, she could have succeeded “if she was truly intent on seeing this thing through.”

He placed her on house arrest except for work and mental health treatment. She is not allowed to be alone with her daughter.

“We all felt that she needed help,” said the jury foreman, who declined to give his name.

He described the efforts of Richland police in the case as “unprofessional ... Keystone Cops. I hope I don't ever get stopped by them.”


The failure of police to secure the crime scene and inconsistencies in their testimony was a theme hammered home by defense attorney Andrew F. Schneider.

During his closing argument, he called Richland police Officer Matthew Lawhead, the first officer on the scene, “inexperienced and incompetent. ... He either had a very bad memory or is a very bad liar.”

Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc J. Furber disputed the defense's strategy as an effort to “attack and distract.”

He played Loy's 911 call for the jury, during which she said: “I need to be admitted to a psych ward. I tried to set my house on fire.”

But before she called 911 at 12:06 a.m. on Dec. 5, Loy phoned Joseph Reichenbach, her former boyfriend and father of her child. She told him to pick up their daughter because she was going to set the house on fire, Reichenbach testified.

Loy had recently learned that Reichenbach's girlfriend was pregnant.

Furber said Loy's plan was to start the fire and have Reichenbach, who lives 15 minutes away in Pennsburg, arrive to witness a burning home with his daughter inside.

“She put the entire block at Forsythia Court at risk and I think the jury thought about that real hard,” Furber said Monday. “I expected a conviction here and that's what we got.”

Said Schneider, “I came in with my client and walked out with my client; that means a lot.”

Asked about the most serious of the charges, attempted murder, jury member Jamie Barr of Ferndale said, “There was no fire.”

Gary Weckselblatt can be reached at 215-345-3169 or gweckselblatt@phillyBurbs.com.

[Karl/PA]

I still think we need to carve Philadelphia out and give it to New Jersey and be done with it.