Commonwealth v. Serge

Facts

On the morning of January 15, 2001, Michael Serge shot his wife Jennifer Serge three times, killing her inside their home in Scott Township, Lackawanna County. At trial, Serge claimed self-defense, alleging his wife attacked him with a knife, and alternatively argued that extreme intoxication rendered him incapable of forming specific intent to kill. The Commonwealth countered that the killing was intentional and that Serge, using his decades of police experience, tampered with the crime scene to stage a self-defense setting by moving his wife’s body and strategically positioning her near a knife he placed on the floor. The Commonwealth presented a fifteen-second computer-generated animation costing between ten thousand and twenty thousand dollars, created by Randy Matzkanin of 21st Century Forensic Animations, depicting the Commonwealth’s theory based on forensic pathologist Dr. Gary Ross’s and crime scene reconstructionist Trooper Brad Beach’s expert opinions. The animation showed Serge shooting his wife first in the lower back and then through the heart as she knelt on the living room floor, illustrating the location of both parties, body positioning, and the sequence, path, trajectory, and impact sites of bullets fired.