Former Crestwood band director denied new trial

WILKES-BARRE — Luzerne County Judge David W. Lupas on Wednesday denied a motion for a new trial for former Crestwood High School band director Theron Roberts.

Roberts, 41, of Pringle, was convicted June 27 on charges of institutional sexual assault, corruption of minors, harassment and two counts of indecent assault of a 14-year-old female student.

Lupas scheduled Roberts to be sentenced on Sept. 27. He remains free on bail.

Attorney Frank Nocito filed a motion seeking a new trial claiming the girl, now 19, attended the June trial with a service dog.

Nocito presented a video that showed several jurors in the trial could have been influenced by seeing the woman with her service dog. Nocito also presented one witness, Times Leader staff writer Edward Lewis, who reported that he had observed the victim exiting the courthouse with the dog during a lunch break in the trial and two jurors were also exiting.

Nocito had noted that at Roberts’ first trial in September 2023, which ended in a hung jury, the girl did not employ the use of a service dog.

The jury convicted Roberts in the second trial in June 2024.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Lupas viewed a surveillance video that showed the victim leaving the courthouse with the dog and her mother and it also showed two jurors walking out at the same time.

Nocito argued that on the morning of the second trial, June 26, he was informed that the woman had a service dog wanted to have it with her when she testified. Nocito wrote in his motion that he “expressed his concern to Judge Lupas about inferences which the jury could draw from the witness’s use of a service dog.”

Lupas ruled the service dog would not be with the woman when she testified, but it would be allowed to remain in the back of the courtroom out-of-view of the jury.

During the two day trial in June, the service dog sat in the back of the gallery with the woman and the woman’s mother and accompanied the woman on the third-floor hallway during trial breaks.

“It was apparent that it was the Court’s intention that the jury not see the dog, and that care would be taken to keep the dog out of the sight of the jury,” Nocito said on Wednesday.

Nocito said it was the responsibility of prosecutors — deputy attorneys general Julia J. Van Leeuwen and Lauren Eichelberger — to keep the service dog from being seen by the jury.

Van Leeuwen argued that the Court’s order was not violated and Lupas added that he didn’t feel the order extended outside the courtroom, calling the encounter during the lunch break “incidental” and that the dog was with both the victim and her mother.

Lewis reported the encounter of the two jurors walking out for lunch at the same time with the woman, her mother and the service dog, in a mid-afternoon online report by the Times Leader on July 27.

Nocito used the Times Leader online report as an exhibit for his motion for a new trial.

“No juror reported they had seen the victim’s service dog upon exiting the courthouse,” van Leeuwen stated, adding that the woman’s service dog was in the courtroom gallery “outside of the view of the jury.”