Oct 8, 2019 4 min read

“Petition denied.”

In a two-word order issued on the first Monday in October, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Jordan Clemons’ conviction and death penalty for the 2012 murder of Karissa Kunco.

Clemons, now 30, was found guilty of first-degree murder by a Washington County jury, which chose to impose the death penalty after hearing trial testimony in 2015. Kunco’s body was found in Mt. Pleasant Township.

District Attorney Gene Vittone was notified by the nation’s highest court via email, but he said the Supreme Court’s decision opens another avenue for the defendant.

“It ends his direct appeal,” Vittone said. “I’m sure he’ll be filing other things, and we’ll address it.”

Clemons’ next attempt to have his conviction overturned is likely to be a petition through the Post-Conviction Relief Act. His attorney, Marc A. Bookman, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Vittone relayed information about the Supreme Court’s decision to the victim’s father.

“He treated this case like it was his own daughter,” said Paul Kunco of Baldwin, a suburb in Pittsburgh’s South Hills.

“We were warned very well about this whole process. I get a heads-up every time they do some sort of appeal.”

Of the latest development, Kunco said, “We’re not surprised. His case is very weak, but you never know. It does give you a little stress.”

His, daughter, Karissa Kunco, would have been 29.

“She’s still with us, just not physically,” Kunco said, noting that a room to accommodate a mother and up to four children at the Women’s Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh has been named after his daughter thanks to a benefactor.

“Many women and children sleep safer and a lot more peacefully,” he said.

Kunco, 21, Clemons’ former girlfriend, was last seen alive on Jan. 11, 2012.

One of the issues before the nation’s highest court dealt with whether Clemons waived his right to have a lawyer present during his initial contact with police in January 2012 after he had consumed alcohol.

As to Clemons’ right to have a lawyer present when his mother drove him to the state police barracks so he could turn himself in, Vittone wrote, “Miranda warnings were properly given to” Clemons, who “then immediately provided a statement which placed him with the victim the evening that she disappeared. This statement was admitted at trial.”

Vittone’s position was that these issues were put to rest when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld Clemons’ conviction and death penalty.

In his attempt to have the U.S. Supreme Court intervene on his behalf, Clemons claimed postings on a Facebook page known as “Karissa’s Army” and other pre-trial publicity precluded a fair trial in Washington County, violating his constitutional rights. Clemons sought an out-of-county jury to weigh testimony in his case.

Bookman cited the large number of followers writing comments, some of which were racially charged, on the Facebook pages and signing a petition to change domestic violence laws as reasons to prejudice a Washington County jury. Karissa Kunco had filed a protection-from-abuse petition against Clemons in Allegheny County for which he failed to appear in court.

In his brief, Vittone wrote that although Public Defender Brian Gorman raised the publicity issue at a pretrial hearing, the defense attorney did not bring it up again at jury selection before Washington County Judge Gary Gilman.

Clemons, an inmate in the State Correctional Institution at Greene County, asked the U.S. Supreme Court last May for permission to proceed as a pauper.

Bookman is an attorney from the nonprofit Atlantic Center for Capital Representation in Philadelphia.

Other than the two-word denial, the only additional information appearing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket in Clemons’ case is that documents related to the case were “distributed for conference” on Oct. 1.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania, the last of which occurred in 1999.