by peter e. bortner
For the fourth time, the state Superior Court has rejected the appeal of a Mahanoy City man serving life in prison for murdering a Columbia County man in 1979 drive-by shooting in Pottsville.
In a three-page opinion filed Wednesday in Pottsville, a three-judge panel dismissed the appeal of Bruce E. Bainbridge, 59, ruling he filed it more than 27 years too late.
"It is untimely as it was not filed within a year of his ... sentence becoming final," Judge Sallie Updyke Mundy wrote in the panel's opinion.
The ruling means Bainbridge will remain in prison for the rest of his life. He is serving his sentence at State Correctional Institution/Graterford in Montgomery County.
A Schuylkill County jury convicted Bainbridge on Jan. 17, 1980, of first-degree murder, attempted murder, a firearms violation and two counts each of aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person. Four days later, the jury imposed the life sentence Bainbridge continues to serve.
Pottsville police charged Bainbridge with firing a gun at a vehicle, while driving his own vehicle, at 8:08 p.m. July 16, 1979, on Route 61 in the city.
Bainbridge was firing at a vehicle occupied by David Dunsavage, Mahanoy City; Robert Deritis and Edward Gualtier, both of Hazleton; Roland Almonti, Allentown; and David Cassick, West Hazleton, according to police. However, a bullet he fired killed John Grivnovics, 28, of Centralia, who was a pedestrian, police said.
Although Bainbridge was not firing at Grivnovics, under the legal doctrine of transferred intent, the intention he had to shoot the five people in the other vehicle is imposed on his shooting of Grivnovics, thereby supporting a conviction of first-degree murder, which requires a specific intent to kill the victim.
Bainbridge asked the court to consider his claim that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during pre-trial negotiations.
However, Mundy wrote that Bainbridge could not claim that as a new constitutional right, and that even if he could, he filed his new petition too late for that.
Judge Jack A. Panella and Senior Judge John L. Musmanno, the other panel members, joined Mundy's opinion.
The Superior Court had rejected Bainbridge's earlier appeals in 1984, 1987 and 2008.