Confusion over what information must be provided by defense in homicide case

WILKES-BARRE — A status conference for a man accused of killing another an outside a problem bar in Plymouth focused largely on what, exactly, the defense team needs to hand over to prosecutors.

Kyon Dane McDonald, 37, has been locked up since 2018 after police say he shot and killed Tierees Owens outside of the former Robbie Nick’s Sports Bar on East Main Street in Plymouth in September of that year.

While the version of events put forward by police suggests that Owens was aggressive before the altercation that led to his death, going so far as to threaten McDonald’s life multiple times throughout the night, they also say McDonald shot Owens at least six times in the chest while standing directly over him.

McDonald was arrested in Wilkes-Barre Township the day after the shooting after a lengthy standoff with police.

Luzerne County Judge David W. Lupas, to whom the case was recently transferred from Luzerne County Judge Tina Polachek Gartley, called for a status conference to be held in the case on Monday, as it would be one of the first times that the parties appeared before him in the case instead of Gartley ahead of the July 26 trial.

Lupas asked if there were any issues in the case, and Luzerne County Assistant District Attorney Angela Sperrazza said that one had cropped up in the past few days.

According to Sperrazza, McDonald’s defense team, made up of Barry Dyller and Theron Solomon of the Dyller Law Firm, had retained an expert witness but had failed to provide the expert’s report to prosecutors.

The prosecution team argues that the defense’s failure to provide the report runs contrary to reciprocal discovery laws, which require that both parties provide information they’ve received in the discovery process to each other.

Dyller, meanwhile, argued that there is no obligation for the defense team to provide the expert witness’ report, because, in his reading of the law, the reciprocal discovery laws only come into play if the defendant had requested reports from the prosecutors, which he says had not happened — even though prosecutors provided those reports anyway.

Lupas, who said he had been under the belief that the reciprocal discovery laws had been signed into law to prevent “trial by ambush,” asked both sides to issue briefs explaining their legal views in the next 10 days.

Prosecutors suggested they would be asking either for the expert witness’ testimony to be precluded or to have the trial continued so they would have more time to prepare for the trial.