Shaw
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WILKES-BARRE — An attorney for homicide suspect Anthony Shaw, charged with fatally stabbing Cindy Lou Ashton in 2018, has renewed his efforts to exclude alleged evidence obtained during the investigation as well as evidence gathered during a state police independent inquiry.
Attorney David V. Lampman II recently filed a pre-trial motion in anticipation of a long-delayed proceeding ordered by the state Superior Court in September 2020.
Prosecutors with the Luzerne County district attorney’s office won a reprisal with the appellate court’s ruling that mandated President Judge Michael T. Vough to conduct an evidentiary hearing about alleged evidence recovered from Shaw’s East Orange, N.J., apartment and vehicle on May 3, 2018.
Shaw was charged by county detectives with killing Ashton, 39, inside her Nicholson Street residence in Wilkes-Barre Township on May 1, 2018.
Court records say Shaw traveled from his New Jersey apartment to speak with Ashton about their on-again, off-again relationship.
After Ashton’s body was found by township police during a welfare check, police in East Orange conducted their own welfare check on Shaw on May 3, 2018, finding him with self-inflicted slash wounds and a handwritten letter in a notebook. Several knives and receipts of Shaw’s purchases at the now-defunct Kmart near Ashton’s residence were also found in the apartment and his vehicle.
After a motions hearing held in June 2019, Vough barred prosecutors from using the alleged evidence from Shaw’s apartment and vehicle because East Orange police entered the apartment without a search warrant.
Prosecutors appealed Vough’s opinion to the state Superior Court, which sent the case back to Vough to conduct a suppression hearing to determine if investigators would have found the evidence during the ongoing investigation, called the inevitable discovery doctrine.
A day after Shaw was found with slash wounds, county Chief Det. Michael Dessoye on May 4, 2018, contacted East Orange police to inquire about Shaw.
According to Lampman’s recently filed motion, prosecutors initiated a state police independent investigation into the criminal investigation and the collection of evidence in the case. Lampman called the state police inquiry the “Taint Team Discovery,” according to his motion.
Lampman claims in his motion members of the criminal investigation assisted the state police independent investigation in sharing of information that resulted in search warrants for Shaw’s DNA samples, collection of surveillance footage from Kmart, Shaw’s apartment complex, footage from a private surveillance camera near Ashton’s residence, and Shaw’s credit card purchases.
Lampman claims the evidence collected during the state police independent investigation is “tainted” and should be excluded.
Vough has scheduled a hearing on Lampman’s motion and the suppression issue for March 31.