Oct 13, 2016 3 min read

The state Superior Court upheld the conviction and life sentence against Lana Roe in the August 2012 murder of a Daisytown man, just seven weeks after the court made a similar judgment against her husband, who fired the fatal shotgun blasts at a remote cabin in Wayne Township.

Lana Roe, 44, was convicted in March 2014 – her second trial after her first one ended in a hung jury – of first degree murder and false information to police in the shooting death of Cordele Patterson.

In her first trial, she was tried along with her husband, Jason Roe, 36, who shot Lana Roe in the face with the shotgun and then followed Patterson into the cabin, shooting him in the arm and neck at close-range, killing him. Jason Roe was convicted in the first trial in November 2013 for first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence.

Lana Roe appealed claiming she should be offered a new trial because during testimony at her second trial, Cpl. Jeremy Barni, the state trooper investigating the case, testified she requested to speak with an attorney at the end of her initial two-hour interview with police. Roe’s defense attorney, Mike Bigley, asked for a mistrial then because of the revelation, but Greene County Judge William Nalitz denied the motion and advised the jury that asking for a lawyer did not indicate guilt or innocence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if there was any mention of (appellant’s) request for an attorney, it has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of (appellant),” the judge said, according to the trial transcript produced in the order. “As I said at the very beginning, a person accused of a crime or even suspected of a crime need say nothing. And not only need a suspect say nothing, but that silence cannot be used against her. Whether or not it should have been mentioned today, you must put it out of your mind, it has nothing whatsoever to do with (appellant’s) guilt or innocence of anything she is charged with.”

In the Superior Court’s decision handed down Thursday, it stated this testimony alone did not warrant a new trial for Roe. She filed her notice of appeal in January 2015.

The two were convicted in the Aug. 14, 2012, Patterson in which Jason Roe took him to a cabin on Strawn Hill Road near Spraggs, apparently to hide him from police. Lana Roe filed a report with police implicating Patterson in a burglary.

According to testimony presented at the trials, Jason Roe went home to pick up his wife and they retrieved their stolen items from Patterson’s house before to the cabin, stopping to buy a 12-gauge shotgun. They stopped again for Jason Roe to practice shooting it, according to testimony.

When they arrived at the cabin, Jason Roe told his wife to get Patterson, but as she and Patterson walked out of the cabin, Jason Roe fired the shotgun in their direction. Lana Roe was hit in the face by pellets from the blast.

Patterson, 38, went back into the cabin and Jason Roe followed him inside, where he killed him. Lana Roe left the scene in a vehicle and drove to a neighbor’s house to call police.

The state Superior Court in August rejected Jason Roe’s appeal on his conviction.