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Prosecutors won't seek death penalty in Bright homicide case
Saturday, October 27, 2001 By Ernie Hoffman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against the man accused of killing an 8-year-old Monessen girl last summer, and the victim's mother said she is not happy with that decision.
Lawyers for Brights seek closed hearings, assail 'media frenzy'
Westmoreland County District Attorney John W. Peck said yesterday that he could not reveal the reasons behind the decision to forgo asking for the death penalty when Charles E. Koschalk of Monessen is brought to trial.
Koschalk is charged with criminal homicide for the July 15 shotgun slaying of Annette Bright, whose body was found three days later in a wooded area of Rostraver.
Peck said prosecutors will seek a first-degree murder conviction, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
"I think he ought to have the death penalty," said the dead girl's mother, who is also named Annette. She said she feared that Koschalk, 35, will escape any real punishment for killing her younger daughter with a shotgun blast to the head.
Annette Bright said neither she nor her husband, John, had been told about Peck's decision and they were upset by it.
Relations between the Brights and the district attorney's office may be strained because the couple are the focus of two investigations by county detectives.
One concerns the Brights' use of money from a memorial fund for young Annette to buy a used car; the other centers on the care of their children, including Marcia, 13, and John Jr., 7, who have been placed in foster care under a court order.
Koschalk told investigators the shooting was an accident that occurred while he and girl were on a deer-hunting trip, but Assistant District Attorney Karen Gelety-Patterson said it was an intentional killing.
At a preliminary hearing last month, Gelety-Patterson produced a letter in which Koschalk threatened to kill Marcia or other members of the Bright family if Marcia ended a relationship she had had with him for more than a year.
Last year, Koschalk was convicted of corrupting the morals of a minor for keeping Marcia out overnight. He was paroled on the condition that he have no contact with Marcia or any other minor.
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