Sheena Delazio
sdelazio@timesleader.com
timesleader.com
Jury picked for Christopher Walsh, 29. Another guard to be tried in June.
WILKES-BARRE – A Luzerne County jury was selected Monday to hear the case of a county prison officer charged with selling drugs to another guard, while a fellow guard will face trial in June on related charges.
A trial for Christopher Walsh, 29, of Pittston, began with jury selection, and will continue through Thursday on three drug-related charges, Judge Joseph Sklarosky Jr. said.Jason Fierman, 36, of Wilkes-Barre, also appeared in Luzerne County Court on Monday when he was scheduled to stand trial. His attorneys asked for a continuance to prepare for the case, granted by Senior Judge Kenneth Brown.
Brown scheduled Fierman’s two-day trial to begin in June on charges he provided drugs to inmates and other guards in the same investigation.
Both men are suspended without pay pending the outcome of the charges, prison Warden Joseph Piazza has previously said.
Walsh is represented by attorney Michael Butera, while Fierman is represented by attorneys William Ruzzo and Basil Russin.
Deputy Attorney General Tim Doherty is prosecuting both cases.
The two men were charged in March 2011 along with two other prison workers, after a 13-month investigation.
After testimony from a number of witnesses before a grand jury, prosecutors learned Walsh allegedly sold cocaine to corrections officers a number of times.
Doherty said Monday several federal agents, as well as Joseph Ciampi and John Gonda, will testify at the trial this week.
Gonda, 40, of White Haven, also a former guard, was sentenced in November 2010 to one to two years in county prison on charges relating to a $3.6 million cocaine distribution ring based in Ashley and run by members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
Gonda was released from prison in July 2011, according to court papers, and paroled to the county’s Day Reporting Center.
Ciampi offered testimony to the grand jury during the investigation and had resigned from his position at the county prison as a guard. Ciampi was not charged in the investigation.
In the case against Fierman, prosecutors say he would bring prescriptions of Suboxone to at least one inmate locked up at the prison.
Prosecutors say they learned through grand jury testimony that Fierman was supplying the drug to the inmate from 2006 to 2008, a total of about 60 pills.
Kevin Warman, 51, of Edwardsville, who had worked as a nursing supervisor at the prison, is scheduled to appear in county court on Thursday on one charge relating to dispensing controlled and non-controlled drugs to corrections officers and other prison employees.
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