The Pennsylvania Su­preme Court has upheld a decision by a visiting judge in Clearfield County that ordered a new sentencing hearing for Daniel Crispell, 47, who received the death penalty 28 years ago for his part in the kidnapping and murder of a St. Marys woman.

Crispell, incarcerated in the State Correctional Institution at Greene County, was sentenced to death in 1990 after being found guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, theft, robbery, receiving stolen property and conspiracy.

On Oct. 26, 1989, at age 18, Crispell and an accomplice, Christopher Weatherill, 17, kidnapped 48-year-old Ella M. Brown from the DuBois Mall.

The teens wanted to go to California and needed an automobile and money.

According to the testimony in the Crispell trial, the pair took Brown to a wooded area where she was stabbed multiple times and died.

They took her car and weren’t captured for several days until Crispell attempted to snatch a purse from an elderly woman in Tucson, Ariz.

Crispell admitted taking part in the kidnapping, but he blamed Weatherill as the person who stabbed Brown to death.

The prosecution, led by now-Clearfield County President Judge Fredric J. Ammerman, focused on Crispell as the person who killed Brown based on an alleged jailhouse confession.

Crispell, it was testified by a former cellmate, told him he was the killer.

As a result, Crispell landed on Pennsylvania’s death row while Weatherill received life in prison after being found guilty of second-degree murder.

Weatherill, who was a juvenile at the time, is challenging his life sentence. He remains incarcerated at the State Correctional Instit­u­tion at Benner in Centre County.

For years, Crispell has been pursuing a new trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel. One of his complaints was that his attorney, F. Cortez Bell, ignored obvious “mitigating circumstances” when asking to jury to spare his client’s life.

Potter County Senior Judge John Leete, appointed to preside over Crispell’s post-conviction hearings, agreed, although the judge refused to grant Crispell a new trial.

He ordered the death pen­alty vacated and a new sentencing hearing to be held.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld Lette’s decision, pointing out that the defense attorney decided, as a matter of strategy, not to present evidence of Crispell’s abusive childhood and mental health issues in asking the jury to spare the young man’s life.

During the penalty phase of the case, the defense wanted to avoid informing the jury about Crispell’s “extensive history of violent juvenile delinquency,” the opinion stated.

The Supreme Court opinion reported that the defense came to an agreement with the prosecution that it would not put on evidence of Crispell’s “good character,” which would have opened the door to the prosecution presenting Crispell’s juvenile record to the jury.

This agreement, however, did not cover the alleged sexual abuse, physical and emotional abuse and mental health problems experienced by Crispell at a young age, Leete stated in his ruling.

Despite the possibility of presenting such evidence, the defense called Crispell to testify as the only mitigation witness.

Crispell expressed remorse for Brown’s death, but he told the jury he was not the one who killed her.

The jury found the details of Brown’s brutal kidnapping and murder outweighed whatever mitigation the defense was seeking and imposed the death penalty.

The Supreme Court concluded that had the defense fully outlined Crispell’s background of abuse, mental health issues and poverty, it would have been probable that at least one juror would have reached a different verdict.

“Counsel’s lack of investigation and presentation of mitigation evidence left the jury without any insight into Crispell’s abusive childhood or the impact this abuse had upon his character and mental health,” according to the Supreme Court opinion.

Red flags about Crispell’s mental health were raised almost immediately upon his arrest in Arizona.

A public defender there had him evaluated by a psychologist, who found the 18-year-old “had impulse control problems, significant problems with depression, manic phases, posterior brain damage and a number of things with regard to his family and concerns that the test raised about who he is as a result of how he was raised.”

The Arizona public defender indicated he was willing to testify during the death penalty phase, but Crispell’s Pennsylvania attorney never responded to his calls, the testimony before Leete showed.

A forensic psychologist reported that Crispell ran away from home at age 16 and that he was “brutally raped by two men” on a Florida beach.

That psychologist reported the abuse “could have been disastrous,” resulting in post-traumatic stress, depression, impulsivity and low self-esteem.

Additional testimony showed Crispell had a history of drug use, and his father, in testimony during Crispell’s post-conviction hearing, testified he frequently beat his son, beginning at age 3, using sticks, broomsticks and metal objects as well as punching him in the face and choking him.

Investigation also showed that Crispell’s military records stated he was “psychologically unfit for military duty.”

Judge Lette found, “There was much evidence readily available that was not utilized by trial counsel.”

The Supreme Court found that Crispell’s counsel did not investigate or even arrange for a mental health examination.

The state Supreme Court declared, “The United States Supreme Court has directed that all capital counsel have an obligation to investigate thoroughly and to prepare mental health and other mitigation evidence.

“Accordingly, we conclude that trial counsel’s performance during the penalty phase of Crispell’s trial was not based upon a reasonable strategy. Rather, it was based upon a misunderstanding of the required scope of a mitigation investigation and inattention to mitigation evidence that was readily available,” the opinion stated.

In addition to ordering a new sentencing hearing, Pennsylvania’s highest court ruled that Leete should allow Crispell, through his attorneys, Samuel J.B. Angell and Victor J. Abreu of the Federal Defender’s Office of Eastern Pennsylvania, to amend his original request for new trial to show that the prosecution withheld part of a report prepared by an Arizona detective in which he opined that Weatherill, not Crispell, was the person who killed the victim.

Crispell’s trial attorney, Bell, and the person handling the appeals for the prosecution, Senior Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos, could not be reached for comment.

The Supreme Court opinion was written by Justice David N. Wecht with five other justices concurring.

Chief Justice Thomas Saylor indicated in a dissent he would have granted a new trial to Crispell because of the defense counsel’s decision not to argue against evidence that Crispell was the person who sought to steal the purse from the elderly woman in Arizona.

Admission of that “prior bad act” should not have been permitted into the trial, he concluded.