The man who murdered Corporal Bryon Dickson outside the Blooming Grove barracks in 2014 has been fighting his death sentence for five years. The Commonwealth says it’s time for that fight to end.
MILFORD, PIKE COUNTY — District Attorney Raymond Tonkin wants President Judge Gregory H. Chelak to throw out Eric Frein’s post-conviction appeal and deny him any further opportunity to challenge his death sentence for the September 2014 murder of Corporal Bryon K. Dickson II.
Tonkin filed the motion to dismiss on February 4, 2025, arguing that Frein’s second amended petition under the Post-Conviction Relief Act fails to raise any claims that would entitle him to relief. The filing came nearly ten months after Frein’s Philadelphia attorney, Michael Wiseman, submitted the 155-page petition challenging the conviction on constitutional grounds.
Frein isn’t going quietly. On May 19, Wiseman filed a response opposing dismissal alongside a separate motion asking Judge Chelak for permission to file a third amended petition with additional exhibits. Tonkin’s office objected the same day. Wiseman replied on June 5. The briefing is done, but Chelak hasn’t ruled or scheduled a hearing, leaving the case in procedural limbo more than eleven years after Frein ambushed two state troopers in the parking lot of the Blooming Grove barracks.
Death Row, Five Years of Appeals, Half a Million in Debt
Frein, now 42, remains on death row at SCI Somerset, where corrections officials transferred him from SCI Phoenix on January 17, 2024. Court records show he owes $532,911 in fines, court costs, and Pennsylvania State Police crime lab fees. A stay of execution granted on June 12, 2020, remains in effect while his state appeals continue, though Pennsylvania hasn’t executed anyone since 1999 and governors from both parties have maintained a moratorium on carrying out death sentences.
The Night of September 12, 2014
The ambush that put Frein on death row happened around 10:50 p.m. on September 12, 2014. Dickson, a 38-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Dunmore who had joined PSP in 2007, was leaving the barracks at the end of his shift when a .308-caliber rifle round struck him from a concealed position in the tree line. Trooper Alex Douglass, then 31, took fire while trying to reach his fallen colleague. Dispatcher Nicole Palmer narrowly escaped injury while attempting to render aid. Dickson died at the scene. Douglass survived but sustained injuries that ended his career as a road trooper.
48 Days in the Woods
What followed was the largest manhunt in Pennsylvania history. For 48 days, law enforcement flooded Pike and Monroe counties with nearly 1,000 officers, helicopters, and search teams while schools closed and residents lived under what felt like occupation. The search cost an estimated $11.9 million before U.S. Marshals found Frein on October 30, 2014, hiding near an abandoned airplane hangar at the old Birchwood Resort in Pocono Township. Troopers handcuffed him with Dickson’s restraints and transported him to booking in Dickson’s patrol car.
The manhunt’s commander was Lieutenant Colonel George Bivens, who ran operations from a command post at the Blooming Grove Township Municipal Building and held daily press briefings that drew regional and national media. The lieutenant in charge of the barracks that night was Christopher Paris, who responded to his own station under attack.
Both men’s careers arc back to that night. Governor Josh Shapiro announced on December 17, 2025, that Paris will retire as PSP Commissioner on January 2, 2026, to take a position with the FBI. Bivens will become Acting Commissioner on December 31, placing the man who hunted Frein through the Pocono woods in command of the entire agency.
Chester County Jury, Two Hours to Convict
Frein went to trial on April 4, 2017, before a jury imported from Chester County after Judge Chelak determined that saturation media coverage made seating an impartial Pike County panel impossible. Prosecutors Bruce Beemer, then the state attorney general, and Pike County First Assistant DA Michael Rakaczewski presented evidence recovered from a series of campsites Frein had established in the woods: the rifle, spent casings matching those found at the barracks, a journal in which Frein detailed his planning, and two functional pipe bombs that qualified as weapons of mass destruction under Pennsylvania law.
The jury deliberated less than two hours on April 19, 2017, before returning guilty verdicts on all twelve counts, including first-degree murder, murder of a law enforcement officer, attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, two counts of terrorism, two counts of possessing weapons of mass destruction, and related charges. The same jury sentenced Frein to death on April 27 after a penalty phase in which Tiffany Dickson testified about her husband and the two young sons he left behind.
Judge Chelak stacked consecutive sentences on the non-capital counts: 20 to 40 years on each terrorism charge, 20 to 40 years for the attempted murder of Douglass, 20 to 40 years for assault on a law enforcement officer, 5 to 10 years on each weapons count, and additional time on the remaining charges. The aggregate: death plus 97 to 194 years. Even if every appeals court in the country vacated the death sentence, Frein would die in state custody.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence unanimously on April 26, 2019, in an opinion by Justice Debra Todd. The court rejected Frein’s challenges to the jury selection process, the admission of evidence, and the proportionality of the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case on January 13, 2020, closing Frein’s direct appeals.
The Post-Conviction Fight
Pennsylvania’s Post-Conviction Relief Act opened the next chapter. PCRA allows defendants to raise issues that couldn’t be litigated on direct appeal, typically claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel or newly discovered evidence. Frein filed a pro se petition on March 2, 2020, seven weeks after the Supreme Court’s denial. The Department of Corrections had scheduled his execution for that June, but Judge Chelak granted a stay on June 12, 2020, pausing the clock while Frein pursued collateral review.
Wiseman entered the case on June 3, 2020, replacing trial attorneys Michael Weinstein and William Ruzzo. The transition from trial counsel to PCRA counsel is standard in capital cases—the whole point is to have different lawyers examine whether the original team made constitutional errors.
The amended petitions have come slowly. Wiseman filed his first counseled version on January 9, 2023, nearly three years after entering the case. Judge Chelak granted leave to file an expanded second version, which arrived on April 3, 2024. Now Wiseman wants a third. Tonkin says Frein has had enough opportunities to raise his claims and that none of them warrant relief.
Federal public defenders James Lawley and Alexandra French have been monitoring from the sidelines since 2020, appointed to handle a potential habeas corpus petition if Frein exhausts his state remedies. They file status reports with the federal court every 45 days and have submitted multiple requests for transcripts from the original proceedings. If Judge Chelak dismisses the PCRA and the state Supreme Court affirms, Frein’s case moves to federal court, where the timeline resets and years of additional litigation begin.
Lawsuits Against the Parents
The criminal case isn’t the only courtroom fight still pending from the 2014 ambush. Tiffany Dickson sued Frein’s parents, Eugene and Deborah Frein, in Pike County in September 2017, alleging they ignored warning signs about their son’s radicalization and that Eugene Frein psychologically manipulated him into adopting anti-government and anti-police views. Douglass filed a similar suit. Both remain active. A third civil case, brought by dispatcher Palmer, was discontinued in February 2021 under circumstances that aren’t clear from the docket.
Court filings indicate the elder Freins have refused to cooperate with their son’s PCRA attorneys, complicating efforts to develop evidence for the appeal. Their own attorney has declined comment. In a separate federal matter, the Third Circuit ruled in 2022 that state police must return 46 firearms seized from the Frein family home during the investigation. None of the guns were used at trial, and the appeals court found that keeping them violated the parents’ constitutional rights.
Waiting on Judge Chelak
Judge Chelak, who has presided over the case since Frein’s arraignment in late 2014, now faces a threshold decision. Granting Tonkin’s motion ends the PCRA at the trial level and sends the case to the Supreme Court. Granting Wiseman’s motion to file a third amended petition restarts the briefing cycle and adds months or years before any ruling.
The Blooming Grove barracks still stands on Route 402 in the rural northwest corner of Pike County, a low brick building with a memorial to Corporal Dickson nearby. The troopers assigned there now weren’t on the job when the shots came out of the tree line on that September night. The men who were—Paris in command of the station, Bivens leading the hunt that followed—are about to take charge of the entire Pennsylvania State Police.
Frein waits in a cell 250 miles west, in Somerset County, for a judge to decide whether he gets another chance to argue for his life.
Case Information
Docket: CP-52-CR-0000019-2015, Pike County Court of Common Pleas
Judge: President Judge Gregory H. Chelak
Defendant: Eric Matthew Frein, DOB May 3, 1983
Current Location: SCI Somerset, Somerset County
PCRA Counsel: Michael Wiseman, Wiseman & Schwartz LLP, Philadelphia
Pike County DA: Raymond Jay Tonkin
Key Dates
September 12, 2014 — Blooming Grove barracks ambush; Cpl. Dickson killed, Tpr. Douglass wounded
October 30, 2014 — Frein captured at Birchwood Resort, Pocono Township
April 4–19, 2017 — Trial in Pike County with Chester County jury
April 27, 2017 — Death sentence imposed
April 26, 2019 — Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirms conviction and sentence
January 13, 2020 — U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari
March 2, 2020 — Frein files pro se PCRA petition
June 12, 2020 — Judge Chelak grants stay of execution
January 9, 2023 — First amended PCRA petition filed
April 3, 2024 — Second amended PCRA petition filed
February 4, 2025 — Commonwealth moves to dismiss
May 19, 2025 — Defense files opposition and motion for third amended petition
June 5, 2025 — Briefing complete; case pending before Judge Chelak
Contacts
Pike County District Attorney: 570-296-3482
PSP Blooming Grove Station: 570-226-5718
PSP Troop R Dunmore: 570-963-3156
Pike County Court: court.pikepa.org/comvsfrein.html
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