by peter e. bortner
The state Supreme Court has rejected another attempt by a Mahanoy City man to appeal his conviction and life sentence for setting a fatal fire in January 1990 in his apartment building.
In a one-sentence order filed Friday in Pottsville, the court refused to allow Elwood P. Hopkins, 59, to file another challenge to the November 1990 conviction that put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
The court did not set forth any reasons for its order.
The order leaves in place the latest state Superior Court opinion, which was filed Jan. 10 in Pottsville, in which a three-judge panel dismissed Hopkins' petition.
It also leaves in place the life sentence imposed April 26, 1993, by Judge, now Senior Judge, D. Michael Stine, who had presided over his trial. Hopkins is incarcerated at State Correctional Institution/Graterford in Montgomery County.
A Schuylkill County jury convicted Hopkins on Nov. 14, 1990, of involuntary manslaughter, arson endangering persons, arson endangering property, risking a catastrophe, causing a catastrophe and reckless burning or exploding.
Prosecutors charged Hopkins with setting a fire in his apartment building Jan. 19, 1990. The fire spread to the adjoining Valley Personal Care Home, where resident Harry J. Kraut, 88, died, prosecutors said.
On four previous occasions - April 15, 1997, July 13, 1998, June 3, 2003, and Aug. 9, 2007 - the Superior Court rejected challenges by Hopkins to his conviction and sentence, and U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III on July 6, 2009, also dismissed Hopkins' attempt to seek relief in the federal courts.
In the January opinion, the panel, consisting of Judges Cheryl Lynn Allen and Judith Ference Olson and Senior Judge James J. Fitzgerald III, ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to consider Hopkins' petition because he did not file it within one year of the date his conviction became final and presented no evidence that any exception to that limitation applied to his case. Allen wrote the panel's opinion.