A western Pennsylvania prosecutor facing scrutiny over his prolific pursuit of the death penalty in cases is accused of compelling a county coroner to help bolster his political image by filing a fraudulent death certificate.
Washington County Coroner Timothy Warco said in an affidavit filed Tuesday in state Supreme Court that District Attorney Jason Walsh was dissatisfied after the Allegheny County Medical Examiner labeled the manner of death of a two-month-old child in May 2022 undetermined.
Walsh, who was running for election, allegedly told Warco he wanted the Washington County Coroner’s Office to have jurisdiction over the death because, “you know that I need this to be a homicide, I need it to win an election,” according to the affidavit.
It alleges Walsh fraudulently obtained a court order for Warco’s office to take jurisdiction over the baby’s death from Washington County President Judge John DiSalle.
Walsh and DiSalle are co-defendants in a federal civil rights lawsuit by a witness in another capital murder case, who claims they violated her right to representation and falsely imprisoned her. DiSalle is also being sued by a former court employee who claims she was subject to retaliation after she raised an alarm about DiSalle allegedly denying legal counsel for indigent defendants who appeared before him in the county’s veterans’ court.
A group of death penalty defense lawyers filed a petition in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week asking the court to intervene in a pair of death penalty prosecutions against two fathers charged with killing their infant children.
The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, based in Philadelphia, alleges Walsh has filed notices that he would seek the death penalty in 11 of 18 homicide cases his office has prosecuted since he took office in 2021.
In at least five cases, detailed in the petition, Walsh’s office failed to produce evidence that the killings were intentional and that there was an aggravating factor, which are required to pursue capital charges. Aggravating factors include an underlying felony, murder for hire, torture, murder of a police officer or first responder and more than a dozen other circumstances.
Walsh, who became county district attorney after his predecessor’s death and was later elected as a Republican in 2023, called the Atlantic Center’s filing a “liberal smear campaign” by an anti-death penalty group.
He did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on the updated filing.
When two-month-old Sawyer Clarke died in 2022, Walsh was actively campaigning for his first election as district attorney. His primary platform was harsh punishment for people who kill infants and children, Warco’s affidavit said.
Sawyer’s father Joshua Clarke told detectives that he had tripped and fallen on his son. Clarke’s grandfather and aunt were in the house at the time and called 911.
Although Sawyer died at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County, an assistant district attorney told Warco that Walsh wanted the Washington County Coroner’s Office to perform the autopsy. Walsh and the assistant district attorney did not believe the Allegheny County Medical Examiner would rule the death a homicide.
According to Warco’s affidavit, Walsh obtained a court order from President Judge John DiSalle listing the child’s place of death as Peters Township, Washington County, in order to give the Warco’s office jurisdiction over the death.
“It is believed, and therefore averred, that Walsh misrepresented the place of death to DiSalle to fraudulently induce him to enter an order that somehow conferred jurisdiction for the death to Washington County,” Warco said in the affidavit.
A forensic pathologist under contract to the coroner’s office performed the autopsy and forwarded the results to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. There, Sawyer’s death was ruled to be the result of blunt force trauma to the head with the manner undetermined.
“I was then approached by Walsh immediately thereafter, who expressed his dissatisfaction with the determination by the Allegheny County medical examiner,” Warco’s affidavit says. “He compelled me to prepare and file a fraudulent death certificate, despite the fact that I did not have jurisdiction to either rule on the cause and manner or to file a death certificate.”
Warco’s death certificate was rejected by the state because the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office had already filed one for Sawyer Clarke.
Joshua Clarke is being held on criminal homicide charges and faces the death penalty, which the Atlantic Center contends is not supported by the evidence produced at a preliminary hearing.
Walsh and DiSalle are accused in the federal civil rights lawsuit of depriving Anitra Banks of her constitutional rights to be free from false arrest and imprisonment. According to the suit in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, Banks was called as a witness in a preliminary hearing for two men charged with a fatal shooting at a convenience store.
After Banks’ testimony, it says Walsh became enraged and had Banks arrested by a county detective. She was then taken in handcuffs to DiSalle’s courtroom, where the judge convened an impromptu contempt hearing where Banks was denied a lawyer and threatened with incarceration unless she cooperated with Walsh.
“It was clear to the plaintiff that … appearing as a witness … and testifying were not enough: she had to say in her testimony what [Walsh] wanted her to say,” the lawsuit claims.
The second lawsuit against DiSalle alleges he had former court employee Elizabeth Sullivan fired after she contacted the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts about her concerns about his operation of the county’s Veterans’ Court.
The suit alleges DiSalle denied dozens of veterans the right to have an attorney at hearings in the problem-solving court and had some jailed for not complying with conditions of the program.
