Convicted sex offender wants to withdraw plea

By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer

PINE TOWNSHIP May 14, 2008 10:18 pm

— A former Pine Township man convicted of raping a girl is again trying to get out from under the plea, or have his sentence reduced.
Richard Carroll, 42, pleaded guilty April 1, 2004, to sexual exploitation of a minor. He admitted raping his girlfriend’s daughter from the time she was 11 until she was 13, sometimes drugging her, and taking sexually explicit pictures of her in Penn Hills, prosecutors said.
Carroll was sentenced to 175 months in prison, and is housed in Petersburg, Va.
He unsuccessfully tried to withdraw his guilty plea, and lost an appeal arguing that his plea was coerced and that U.S. District Court Judge William L. Standish, Pittsburgh, did not properly take into account Carroll’s mental illness.
Carroll covers some of the same ground in his motion to vacate sentence, and adds criticism of his trial attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender W. Penn Hackney, for alleged failure to properly investigate the case and interview witnesses, including what Carroll calls inconsistencies in the statement of the victim.
At Carroll’s sentencing Jan. 14, 2005, Hackney told Standish he has not been as helpful to Carroll as he has wanted because they have been unable to agree on much.
Carroll said at the same hearing that he was “not denying guilt” but that parts of the allegations were not true.
The case veered into a new direction when, according to prosecutors, Carroll tried to hire a hit man to kill the girl, her mother, and the lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina O. Miller. Ms. Miller tried to wrap those allegations into the sentencing and pushed for a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years. Standish said he could not do that without an evidentiary hearing, which was not held.
Carroll was not charged separately with those allegations, and Hackney said at the time he would dispute them.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen R. Kaufman, responding to Carroll’s motion, said Carroll waited too long to file his motion — missing the deadline by five days; made allegations that already have been addressed on appeal; should have raised other issues in a previous appeal; incorrectly raised an allegation that sentencing guidelines were not applied correctly; and failed to show that alleged errors by Hackney, if they had not been made, would have resulted in a different outcome.
Kaufman said Hackney conducted an extensive investigation and raised legal and factual issues prior to the plea.
Carroll is seeking a hearing, which Kaufman said he is not entitled to.