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WILKES-BARRE — Despite impassioned pleas from friends and family members, a Wilkes-Barre Township mother convicted of attempting to kill her to two children by asphyxiating them with exhaust fumes was sentenced to decades in prison.
Her lawyer said he already plans to appeal.
Melissa Scholl, 34, was found guilty on Sept. 15 of two counts of attempted murder. Prosecutors say, in December 2015, she loaded her two children, Julian and Vera, 7 and 5 at the time, into her car, running a hose from the exhaust pipe into the window. The jury rejected testimony from the defense suggesting Scholl was just crying out for help, instead siding with prosecutors that she intended to end her children’s lives.
On Monday, Luzerne County Judge David Lupas sentenced Scholl to five to 15 years in state prison for each count of attempted homicide. The sentences are to be served consecutively, meaning her total prison time amounts to 10 to 30 years.
Scholl was also sentenced to five years of probation for each count to be served consecutively, amounting to a decade of probation.
Before his sentencing, Lupas said he was considering what defense attorney Larry Kansky called “mitigating circumstances” — circumstances that were brought up by both Kansky and several friends and members of Scholl’s family who were testifying to her character.
Kansky described Scholl as a woman who was at the end of her rope. He described Scholl’s husband, Dan Scholl, as a violent man who was physically abusive of her, saying he had also raped her.
Melissa had filed two protection from abuse orders against Dan. The second of the two PFAs was filed in August 2015, only two months after the couple were wed and four months before she tried to asphyxiate her children.
Kansky said Scholl accepted the verdict, but said the extreme duress she was placed under was the biggest mitigating circumstance in the case. Kansky also asked Lupas to consider that no physical injury was caused to either child as a result of the attempted murder and that Scholl had no previous criminal record.
Character witnesses, including friends of Scholl’s and her parents, described her as a loving but troubled woman.
Eugene Sperazza, a civil attorney and a pastor for Central United Methodist Church, the church Scholl attended, said Scholl’s children are truly loving kids, and that kind of love needs to be taught by family.
Sperazza said a lengthy prison sentence for Scholl would “rob the kids of the source of love.”
Roland Stanton, Scholl’s father, asked Lupas to be lenient, saying Scholl had always been a “little drama queen.” Stanton said he’d be 70 soon, and has spent the last three Christmases without Scholl, his youngest daughter.
“I ask you to help me repair my family as best as possible,” he said while choking back tears. “Please be as lenient as you possibly can.”
Scholl spoke before Lupas as well, something she did not do at either the trial that ended with her conviction or her mistrial in June.
Beginning by congratulating Lupas on his recent retention, Scholl maintained the argument leveled throughout the trials that her actions were a cry for help.
“I foolishly thought that making a scene (for my mother) would make her realize how desperate I felt,” she said.
Citing evidence that showed her vehicle was off at the time and that a seal was not created between the exhaust pipe and the cab of the vehicle, Scholl said she believed at the time that her actions were “harmless.”
First Assistant District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce vehemently disagreed with Scholl and the other character witnesses. Calling for aggregated, consecutive sentences, Sanguedolce said the sentence was about sending a message to the public that behavior like Scholl’s would not be tolerated.
Lupas said he was considering the mitigating circumstances brought up by the defense, but said it did not forgive her actions.
“What outweighs all that is the incident that brings us here,” he said.
After the verdict was handed down, Kansky called it “harsh.” Kansky claimed there were numerous issues with the trial, suggesting that some evidence was improperly admitted, like text messages between Scholl and her mother he claims were found outside of the scope of a warrant.
“I’m not giving up on Melissa Scholl,” Kansky said. “In fact, the appeal is already written.”
Sanguedolce said, while a strategy would have to be formed after that appeal is filed, the overall response to the appeal will be the same.
“We’re going to fight it to the death,” he said.
On her way out of the courthouse, Scholl did not comment directly on the sentencing. Instead, she said she loves Julian and Vera, and wished members of the media a happy Thanksgiving.
