SCRANTON, Pa. — A man charged in connection with the death of a woman in Scranton has been found guilty of murder by a judge in Lackawanna County.
Cornelius Mapson was convicted by Judge James Gibbons on all the counts against him, including first-degree and third-degree murder.
The two other co-defendants in this case – Melinda Palermo and Kevin Weeks -- pleaded guilty and testified against Mapson at trial.
Investigators say Nina Gatto was killed inside her home on Kennedy Street in Scranton on April 20, 2018.
Prosecutors called Mapson the mastermind of a plan to kill Gatto, a confidential informant. He will likely spend life in prison for the crime.
For Mapson's defense attorney, avoiding the death penalty was the win here.
"Obviously, when you take on a capital murder case, the first goal is to save the defendant's life or the client's life, and get death off the table and then see where you end up from there," said defense attorney Bernie Brown.
Prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty if Mapson agreed to be tried by only a judge, an arrangement that was made before the COVID-19 pandemic but allowed the case to move forward.
"The fact that we were able to try a case during the COVID crisis is truly unique and probably the first in the state, certainly of a case of this magnitude," said Lackawanna County District Attorney Mark Powell.
Gatto was working with police to help convict Mapson of drug charges.
When Mapson learned Gatto's identity, he and the others injected her with a lethal amount of fentanyl at her home in north Scranton and held her mouth and nose closed while she overdosed.
Prosecutors worry the murder has deterred people from helping in police investigations.
"Certainly, that is a concern that it acts as a deterrent to a very valuable tool that law enforcement uses to stop the poison from coming into our communities. So, any threat to any witness we take very seriously, and we want to set it straight that there will be consequences for anybody who threatens a witness," said Powell.
Mapson will be sentenced later this year.