Diamond kin to get new term

LEBANON, Pa. - The father of the founder of an anti-incumbent group should have received a longer minimum sentence for firing a shotgun at police who were trying to arrest him, a state court ruled.

A three-judge Superior Court panel ordered a resentencing for Russell L. Diamond in a ruling released last week.

Lebanon County Court Judge John Tylwalk failed to consider Diamond's 1958 burglary conviction in Alaska and his use of a shotgun during the August 2005 standoff with state police, Superior Court Judge Maureen Lally-Green said in a written opinion.

Diamond's attorney, Harry Fenton, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment yesterday.

Diamond was sentenced in 2006 to 21/2 to 6 years in state prison for aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, terroristic threats and resisting arrest. He was convicted of those charges in May 2006; jurors deadlocked on a charge of attempted homicide, and Tylwalk declared a mistrial on that charge.

Lally-Green disagreed with Tylwalk's reasoning that a five-year mandatory minimum sentence sought by prosecutors did not apply in the case because they gave Diamond insufficient notice of their intention to prosecute him under the law.

District Attorney Dave Arnold appealed the sentence to Superior Court.

Police said Diamond locked himself in his house when they went to arrest him for failing to appear in court in a drunken-driving case. Troopers stormed the house and ended the standoff nine hours later, after Diamond fired a shotgun and narrowly missed a trooper's head.

Diamond's son Russ is founder of PACleanSweep and a candidate in the Republican primary for a Lebanon County seat in the state House of Representatives.