Through most of 1987, Richard Hackett had a standing plea agreement with the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. The deal - a recommended 6- to 15-year sentence if Hackett pleaded guilty to third-degree murder - would have spared his life.
The deal came about after Hackett turned himself in the day of the murder and agreed to help police investigate the savage attack on Dunne and her boyfriend, Greg Ogrod. Hackett admitted letting three men into a Northeast Philadelphia house to attack Ogrod, but said that he was not present during the attack and had no idea that anyone was going to be killed.
In a civil lawsuit, Hackett's parents charge that Phillips farmed their son's case out to an unseasoned associate who failed to follow through on the plea agreement. Their breach-of-contract suit against Phillips, a former homicide prosecutor best-known as the attorney for major league baseball umpires, is scheduled for trial this month in Chester County, where he lives.
Prosecutors withdrew the plea agreement in November 1987, and Phillips resigned from the case soon afterward. In July 1988, a Philadelphia jury convicted Hackett of first-degree murder, and Common Pleas Court Judge George J. Ivins sentenced him to death.
"We all make mistakes," said Hackett's court-appointed trial lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom of Philadelphia. "But clearly, had (Hackett's plea bargain) gone the way it should have, he wouldn't be there" on death row.
Bergstrom is appealing the murder conviction. The appeal has nothing to do with the collapsed plea bargain.
The Hacketts want Phillips to refund the $25,000 fee he collected for representing their son. Their lawsuit says Phillips broke promises to handle the case personally and to stay with it for the duration.
"We gave that man $25,000, and he didn't do his job," said Charles Hackett, 49, a professional dog breeder in Kresgeville, a small Poconos village in Monroe County.
