An appeal of the Christopher Porco murder conviction is on the docket for Monday, Nov. 30, in the Appellate Division, 2nd Department in Brooklyn.
Porco, the 26-year-old Delmar native convicted of murdering his father, Peter, and attacking his mother, Joan, with an axe, is serving two consecutive sentences of 25 years to life in prison. Porco has to serve at least 21 years of his first 25-year sentence before he begins serving the next 25-year sentence issued by presiding Judge Jeffrey Berry.
The case was moved to Brooklyn from the 3rd Department in Albany because Peter Porco was a law clerk for an appellate judge in Albany.
Christopher Porco was convicted on Dec. 12, 2006 of attacking Peter and Joan Porco with an ax on Nov. 15, 2004 in their Delmar home.
His defense was he was asleep on a couch at the time at the University of Rochester, where he was an engineering student. University of Rochester student Marshall Crumiller is the last person to have seen Porco the night before the murder, after 10 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. The next time anyone saw the defendant was the following day at 8:45 a.m. Rachel Boylan saw Christopher Porco running back to Munro Hall as she looked down over a bridge on the campus.
Porco maintained his innocence at the 2006 sentencing. Any possible chance the police had of catching the true perpetrators evaporated long ago, he said.
Porco’s Attorney, Terence Kindlon, is expected to argue to that testimony from an investigator about Joan Porco nodding when she was asked if Christopher had attacked her should not have been allowed.
Joan Porco’s neurologist, Dr. Mary Dumbovy, chair of neurosurgery and rehab at Unity Health System in Rochester, testified in 2006 that Joan Porco’s nonverbal `yes` and `no` answers to a Bethlehem police detective the day she was attacked tell nothing about her state of mind.
Dumbovy said it is impossible to tell what Joan Porco understood after detective Christopher Bowdish asked if her son Christopher committed the terrible crimes against her and her husband on Nov. 15, 2004.
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