Lawyer pleads guilty to wrongly owning 19 guns

A Montgomery County lawyer who was convicted of killing a man whom he said he mistook for a deer pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to possessing 19 guns that he was barred from owning because of a prior conviction.

A June sentencing hearing was scheduled for David Manilla, 51, of Worcester Township.

In November 2010, Manilla shot and killed Barry Groh, 52, of Quakertown, who was hunting on the border of Manilla's property in Richland Township, Bucks County.

Manilla told police that he mistook Groh, who was about 90 yards away, for a deer. But the Bucks County judge in the case, Albert J. Cepparulo, said, "I think you should consider yourself lucky. This case was as close to a murder case as I've seen." Manilla was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and firearms offenses.

Manilla at the time was barred from owning weapons because in 1985 he was convicted of aggravated assault for breaking a man's skull by smashing a weightlifting bar over his head.

According to the plea memo entered in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Manilla arranged to have 86 guns moved to the property owned by his common-law wife in the days after the shooting. She then called police, who seized 19 of them - seven rifles and 12 shotguns - that belonged to Manilla, including the rifle used in the killing.

Robert Goldman, Manilla's attorney, said Manilla did not know he could not own the guns.

"Regrettably, he was a hunter and a collector of hunting guns, and he said he was unaware that he couldn't maintain the guns," Goldman said.

After Manilla shot Groh, he and his hunting partners, including his uncle, former Montgomery County District Attorney Michael D. Marino, failed to call 911 for at least 30 minutes as Manilla tried to conceal evidence. Emergency workers initially misread the cause of Groh's death as a heart attack, which Manilla and Marino did not dispute. The case went unsolved for several days.

While being tried for the shooting, Manilla said that he "was clearly irresponsible" and "should not have been hunting at all."

Cepparulo agreed, telling Manilla during sentencing, "When I am done sentencing you today, you will have touched your last firearm and you will have squeezed your last trigger. You will never again possess a firearm for as long as you live."

The rifle that Manilla used to shoot Groh was illegal for hunting in densely populated counties such as Bucks because of its power and range.

In addition to the 1985 assault charge and the 2010 shooting, Manilla lost his hunting license for two years in 1993 after he and another lawyer negligently fired in the direction of a quail hunter in Schuylkill County, wounding the hunter in the neck. Because Manilla was charged only with a summary offense, a background check was not performed, allowing him to avoid felony firearms charges.

In 2009, he was arrested for shoplifting about $200 worth of merchandise from a Cabela's store in Berks County.

The maximum jail sentence for Manilla resulting from Monday's guilty plea would be 10 years, according to Patty Hartman, a federal court spokeswoman.