Brenda Wiley | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers

The latest appeal filed by a woman who stabbed her brother and mother to death more than 20 years ago has been denied.

Brenda Wiley, now 37, was convicted in 1992 of fatally stabbing her mother, Bonnie Wiley, 40, and brother, Kevin Wiley, 14. She was 15 at the time of the killings at the family’s Delaware Township home, but was tried as an adult.

She was sentenced to 30 years to life in state prison but has tried several time to overturn her conviction or reduce her sentence. She appealed her conviction and was denied in 1994. The state Supreme Court declined to hear her case.

According to the court record, Wiley filed a petition for post-conviction relief in 1997, claiming her attorney was ineffective. Her petition was denied and the appellate court later affirmed that decision. She filed again in 2005, was denied and her appeal failed. In 2006, Wiley also petitioned the federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus that was denied in 2008.

Most recently, in January 2011, she filed a motion for reconsideration of her sentence. That motion was denied on Feb. 17, 2011. Wiley appealed and today, Feb. 24, the appellate judges released a decision again affirming the lower court ruling.

In her appeal Wiley argued that the judge incorrectly denied her motion for reconsideration of her sentence and the prosecutor incorrectly declined to join in the motion. She also argued that the motion for reconsideration should have been admissible under various rules.

“We find insufficient merit in these arguments to warrant discussion in a written opinion,” the appellate judges wrote.

In taped interviews, Wiley described hitting her brother over the head with a glass soda bottle, then stabbing him in the neck with a kitchen knife. She put his body in a sleeping bag and covered his head with a plastic trash bag.

On the tapes, Wiley said she then prepared to kill her mother, who was outside in a greenhouse at the family’s nursery near Rosemont.

Wiley said she got an iron bar from a kitchen closet. When her mother came in the back door, Wiley told the detective she hit her mother on the head then stabbed her repeatedly.

Before the murders Wiley had been grounded over her relationship with an 18-year-old who testified that he would often sneak into the teen’s bedroom to spend the night with her.

According to testimony at the trial, her parents had asked the boy to stop seeing their daughter.

Wiley said she killed her mother because she “kept ragging on me” and “wouldn’t let me do anything anymore.” She said she killed her brother because he “made fun of me again, as usual.” She had planned to kill her father, but he was at work at the time.
Wiley is serving two concurrent life sentences and won’t be eligible for parole until at least 2022.

In January 1997 attorneys Henry Price and Matthew Boylan filed a motion claiming that Wiley’s legal counsel at trial, public defender Nicholas DiChiara, was “ineffective.” He filed an appeal several months after the conviction, but died in 1995.

Before Di Chiara died, Price agreed to a request from Wiley’s father, Mark, to take over the appeal. He argued that Wiley was questioned by authorities without having an “unbiased adult” present. Her father was there when his daughter was interrogated by police. Price said he was a victim and therefore biased.

According to court papers, Wiley wasn’t informed she could testify at her “waiver” hearing, which determined that she would be tried as an adult; her attorney didn’t try to have the trial moved to another county due to pre-trial publicity; and she didn’t have an expert witness testify at her waiver hearing that she suffered from a severe personality disorder.

In her second application for post-conviction relief, Wiley argued that new evidence regarding her mental condition at the time of the murders warranted a new waiver hearing or trial. She also said that the life sentences imposed were a violation of the Eighth Amendment and felt that she should have been granted a hearing so she could show that her attorneys were ineffective.

After her application was denied, she filed an appeal arguing that Judge Mahon was wrong because he didn’t order the hearings she wanted.

Wiley is serving her sentences at Edna Mahon Correctional Facility for Women in Union Township.

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY
APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-4543-05T54543-05T5

STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
BRENDA WILEY, Defendant-Appellant

Submitted December 13, 2006 - Decided December 29, 2006

Before Judges Wefing and C.S. Fisher.

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Hunterdon County, Indictment No. 91-06-0076-I.

Brenda Wiley, appellant pro se.

Stuart Rabner, Attorney General, attorney for respondent (Carol M. Henderson, Assistant Attorney General, of counsel and on the brief).

PER CURIAM

In this appeal, we review the denial of defendant's second petition for post-conviction relief (PCR). After careful consideration of the record in light of the contentions raised, we affirm substantially for the reasons set forth by Judge Roger F. Mahon in his written decision of April 4, 2006.

The record on appeal reveals that defendant was fifteen years old in 1990 when she killed her mother and fourteen-year-old brother. After a contested hearing, the Family Part judge waived jurisdiction and defendant was tried in the Law Division, where she was convicted of the purposeful and knowing murders of her brother and mother and sentenced to concurrent life sentences with a thirty-year period of parole ineligibility.

On direct appeal, defendant argued that (1) the Family Part judge erred, procedurally and substantively, in ordering the waiver; (2) her statement to the police should have been excluded; (3) the jury instructions regarding diminished capacity were erroneous; and (4) the proceedings were fundamentally unfair because the State allegedly took a different factual position at the trial than it took at the waiver hearing. We affirmed by way of an unpublished opinion in 1994. The Supreme Court denied certification. 144 N.J. 174 (1996).

Defendant's first PCR petition was denied in 1997. At that time she argued that her counsel was ineffective in failing: (1) to call an expert witness at the waiver hearing; (2) to move to change venue; and (3) to advise defendant regarding the consequences of testifying at the waiver hearing. We affirmed in an unpublished opinion in 1998. The Supreme Court denied certification. 157 N.J. 647 (1999).

Defendant filed a second PCR petition in 2005, over thirteen years after the judgment of conviction. She then argued that (1) new evidence regarding her mental condition at the time of the murders warranted a new waiver hearing or a new trial; (2) the life sentences imposed constituted a violation of the Eighth Amendment; (3) N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-26 unconstitutionally shifted the burden of proof to her at the waiver hearing; and (4) an evidentiary hearing was required to explore her ineffective assistance of counsel arguments. Judge Mahon denied this second PCR petition by way of an order entered on April 4, 2006.

Defendant appealed, asserting that the trial judge erred in denying her second PCR petition because:

I. THE TRIAL COURT ERRED BY NOT ORDERING A SUA SPONTE HEARING INTO HER MENTAL ILLNESS AND IN NOT DOING SO, THUS PRODUCED AN UNJUST RESULT.

II. IMPOSITION OF COURT RULE 4:50-1(B) SHOULD BE APPLIED.

III. BECAUSE WILEY WAS PROVIDED INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL(S) AND BECAUSE WILEY WAS PREJUDICED THEREBY, THE APPELLATE COURT SHOULD GRANT HER MOTION FOR POST-CONVICTION RELIEF. IN THE ALTERNATIVE, BECAUSE WILEY HAS PRESENTED A PRIMA FACIE PROOF THAT SHE HAD BEEN DEPRIVED EFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL(S), THE APPELLATE COURT SHOULD GRANT HER AN EVIDENTIARY HEARING.

We find no merit in these contentions.

In a thorough and well-reasoned written decision, Judge Mahon denied defendant's petition, finding it to be procedurally barred due to the absence of excusable neglect or exceptional circumstances. Judge Mahon also concluded that: the medical information presented by defendant did not constitute newly discovered evidence or shed additional light on the issues previously adjudicated; that the life sentence was legal and constitutional, correctly relying upon State v. King, 372 N.J. Super. 227 (App. Div. 2004), certif. denied, 185 N.J. 266 (2005); that N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-26 is constitutional, as determined in State in the Interest of A.L., 271 N.J. Super. 192 (App. Div. 1994); and that defendant's current claims of ineffective assistance of counsel were the same claims previously adjudicated and had merely been "repackaged" in this PCR petition.

We affirm substantially for the reasons set forth in Judge Mahon's written decision.

Affirmed.

Emotional pleas at her sentencing on Jan. 24, 1992, had little effect. Brenda Wiley is serving a 30-years-to-life sentence. Her most recent attempt to have her sentence reduced also failed. (file photo by Karen Servis/Nj.com)