Bucks man gets death for warehouse killings

Robert Diamond, a mentally ill, conspiracy-obsessed Bristol man who fatally shot two men outside his former workplace, was condemned to die for the murders yesterday in Bucks County Court.

The death sentence, haltingly pronounced by Judge Rea B. Boylan, provoked sobs from the victims' families and stunned silence from Diamond's. A woman rose and loudly cursed Diamond, 33, as he was led away.

District Attorney Michelle Henry, who prosecuted the case herself, called death "the only just verdict" for Diamond. Defense attorney Barnaby Wittels angrily denounced the sentence as "a travesty of justice" and "against the law."

It was the first time that a Bucks County judge, acting independently of a jury, had imposed a death sentence since Pennsylvania reinstated capital punishment in 1978. Diamond pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of first-degree murder, leaving it to Boylan to decide whether he should die or be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

On Aug. 1, Diamond drove to the Simon & Schuster book warehouse, his former employer down the street from his cluttered apartment in Bristol. There, he gunned down Angel Guadalupe, 46, of Falls Township, who was driving his sport-utility vehicle from the parking lot. Guadalupe, a father of four, had just started the extra job two weeks earlier to help pay his mortgage.

Diamond then shot and killed Reginald Woodson, 52, of Willingboro, who had tried to intervene after hearing shots. Diamond shot Woodson in the back as he tried to run back inside the warehouse - a moment captured on a security video that sent Woodson's family into loud wailing when it was played in court this week.

Some of that emotion, and the racially charged tension of the case, boiled over as Diamond was led from the courtroom in handcuffs.

An unidentified woman who had sat among the Guadalupe family all week stood up and screamed, "You got what you deserve, you dirty white [obscenity]."

Prosecutors had alleged that Diamond had directed his anger on minority workers, believing that they had conspired to get him into trouble during his employment at the warehouse. Woodson was African American; Guadalupe was Hispanic.

"He was seeking revenge," Henry told reporters afterward, "and on that day, he decided who was going to live and die. He made selections, and he killed two men."

Family members declined to comment after Boylan's pronouncement.

Wittels anchored his defense on Diamond's mental state, calling him too psychotic to have rationally pulled together such a plan. Diamond, who had suffered from mental illness most of his adult life and twice had been treated in mental-health facilities, was far too sick to be put to death, Wittels argued.

Boylan said she found that the aggravating factors against Diamond - the multiple victims and the danger of death he imposed on other workers that day - outweighed the mitigating factors. Those included his mental affliction, his lack of a serious prior record, and the fact that he admitted to his crimes.

Wittels promised to appeal "all the way up to the United States Supreme Court" to overturn the sentence.

"This was a travesty of justice. The verdict was against the evidence and against the law," he said. "This judge committed a most serious error, and she will have to account for it."

Diamond joins five other men on death row for Bucks County murders. Each of the others was condemned to die by a jury. The state's last execution was in 1999.