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Hugo Selenski’s 2015 homicide trial and conviction made national headlines.
For Luzerne County First Assistant District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce, who led the prosecution, it was both a victory and an emotional process.
The man who will become Luzerne County’s next DA today vividly remembers pacing the kitchen floor the night before the penalty phase began, in which the prosecution would urge jurors to sentence the convicted killer to death.
“These were heinous crimes,” Sanguedolce said, and the prosecution felt the recommended penalty was warranted.
That didn’t make preparation easy.
“If I actually succeed at this, I would be playing a role in putting somebody to death,” Sanguedolce recalls thinking.
“That was more of a weight than I expected it to be,” he recalled.
In the end, Selenski was sentenced to life in prison. For Sanguedolce, that outcome was not necessarily surprising, nor is the general decline in death penalty cases.
“The penalty phase is emotional,” he said. “That same feeling I had is now upon the jury — people who don’t make their living convicting people.”
Sanguedolce, who has for nearly two decades made his living doing just that, is scheduled to be sworn in at 4 p.m. today under the Luzerne County Courthouse dome, replacing incumbent DA Stefanie Salavantis, who is leaving the post to run for county judge.
And it will mark a new phase for Sanguedolce, who in his early years as a lawyer had much different visions for his future career.
The Pittston area native, 44, graduated from Scranton Prep in 1994 before earning an economics degree from the university of Scranton, followed by a law degree from Penn State Dickinson Law School.
As a law student, “I wanted nothing to do with criminal law,” Sanguedolce said.
After graduation, he practiced municipal law in suburban Philadelphia, but Sanguedolce felt the ties of home calling.
“No question about it,” he said. “I’ve been very close with my family.”
His roots in the region run deep, as does pride in his Italian heritage.
Sanguedolce’s paternal grandfather emigrated to the U.S. in 1912, and then went on to serve the nation in World War I, “barely speaking any English.” His maternal grandparents came to this country in 1950.
His father was an electrician, his mother a teacher’s aide. While neither attended college, both placed a strong emphasis on hard work and education for their children.
That lesson stayed with Sanguedolce. So did something else that he saw as a youth.
“Anytime anyone had an important question to be answered, they went to a lawyer,” he said.
The young man wanted to be one of those people who had the answers and helped others — although, as he pointed out, life has also taught him that no one ever has all of the answers.
When Sanguedolce returned to the Wyoming Valley his path led him to the District Attorney’s Office, which he joined in 2002.
“Dave Lupas took a chance on a kid who knew nothing about criminal law and less about politics,” Sanguedolce said of the former DA, now a county judge.
And the position Sanguedolce is about to occupy?
“It never entered my mind” at that time, he said.
Sanguedolce continued to privately practice municipal law — including for Laflin, Courtdale, Wilkes-Barre Township, Hanover Township and Pittston Township — and had a private practice with brother Leonard, something he will not be able to do as DA.
But the past two decades have seen the young man who initially shied away from criminal law become a seasoned prosecutor in the courtroom.
He was third chair for Selenski’s first homicide trial, in 2006, in which Selenski was convicted on abuse of corpse charges but escaped conviction on homicide charges, partly on a technicality.
When Selenski was finally brought to trial on new charges in 2015, Sanguedolce said prosecutors were not only thoroughly prepared but had learned from previous mistakes.
He recalls the “sheer volume of material” and the massive list of witnesses — 70 at one point — of whom perhaps half that ultimately were called, a testimony both to preparation and effective management.
But it was another case in recent years that was, for Sanguedolce, perhaps more memorable.
In 2019 Sanguedolce led the prosecution against Preston Bonnett, who was convicted of murder and arson in the deaths of Erik Dupree, 16, Devon Major, 12, and Ezekial Major, 7, in a 2017 blaze.
“After Selenski I was pretty burned out,” Sanguedolce said. “But I knew immediately that this was a case I had to take and wanted to take.”
And as with that night before Selenski’s sentencing, Sanguedolce again felt the weight of the work he was about to do the night before closing arguments.
“I knew I would be the last voice those kids would have before the jury,” he said.
Throughout the years, Sanguedolce has been assisted in carrying the weight of his work by his wife, Lisa, acknowledging that the job entails many interrupted nights.
“I couldn’t do it without my wife’s support,” he said.
He also acknowledged the support and teaching of his outgoing boss, Salavantis.
“I was fortunate in working with Stefanie,” he said, praising her collaborative decision-making process and the discussions he has had with her over the years.
Now, he quips, all the heavy weight of the job will be his, along with the mundane: “the five-step process of buying ink pens.”
As for the future, Sanguedolce said he will be comfortable with the seat being put up for election this year, if that is what ultimately happens.
And would he like to be a candidate if that is the case?
“Yes,” he said.