Kevin Nestor (by Ed Koskey © 2002/2003)

By September 2003, prosecutors were prepared to begin their case against Mitchell. They believed they had a strong case, though there had been some difficulties. Early on in the investigation, for example, Nestor gave a detailed statement, outlining the events that had transpired. Erickson, who is also representing Nestor, contends that the statement was obtained under duress, that police had frightened her client into talking when they threatened him with many years in prison for the sexual aspects of the crime.

"They scared him by telling him that he'd spend the rest of his life (in jail), they were just goofy about it," Erickson said. She also insists that the police took advantage of what Nestor describes as his "emotional problems" and a kind of mental dullness he experienced during the interrogation as a result of the fact that he was a diabetic who had not, at the time, taken his medication. Nestor later recanted his statement.

All the same, investigators had reams of evidence, they had photographs of Moyer's injuries as well as photographs of the remote location where part of Moyer's ordeal had allegedly taken place. Erickson would later question whether those photos, obtained as a result of Nestor's early cooperation, should have been admitted into evidence.

More importantly, though, they had Mitchell himself. As Serina would later put it in an interview with Crimelibrary, Mitchell never really denied that he had attacked Moyer. In fact, Serina said, "he thought he was doing God's work."

Erickson decided to gamble on her client's sense of righteousness. Rather than waste her time trying to dissect the portions of the state's case that her client didn't really contradict, Erickson said she decided to try to convince the jury that what Mitchell did was, while legally a crime, morally justifiable under a higher law.

It is a tactic known as "jury nullification," in which a defendant in essence tries to deflect the charges against him by appealing to a jury's sense of conscience in the hopes that the jury will effectively set the law aside.

Erickson's strategy, she told Crimelibrary, was to convince the jury that Jason Moyer was a threat, not just to Mitchell's family but to the community at large, that he was a man "who deserved a whooping and that this was just a whooping."

To that end, she hammered Moyer on the stand, demanding to know whether he had raped Mitchell's stepdaughter, and whether he had sex with her after she had passed out. He didn't waver, but insisted that whatever had happened was consensual.

It's not clear whether the jury, drawn from the same hardscrabble coalfields as Mitchell and Moyer, sympathized at all with the accused abductor. It may have helped that the allegation that Moyer was allegedly forced to sodomize himself was not included in Mitchell's trial. Erickson believes that to some degree, they did feel some connection to Mitchell.

Still, the jury had to grapple with the fact that the abduction and assault went on for so long as long as four hours, according to the prosecution, at least two, according to Erickson. In the end, Erickson believes, it was that fact as much as any other that led the jury, after nearly five hours of deliberation, to convict Mitchell of kidnapping, conspiracy and aggravated assault, as well as the lesser offenses of simple assault, making terrorist threats, possessing instruments of crime, possessing prohibited offensive weapons and unlawful restraint. He was acquitted on charges of reckless endangerment.

"If he had just taken him to the house and taken him behind the woodshed and beat him, then I think he would have walked," Erickson said of her client. "But the fact that it went on so long"

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Not long after Mitchell's trial ended, Jason Moyer was returned to jail on a parole violation. It's not clear how long he will remain behind bars. Nestor, meanwhile, is to be tried in January. In addition to the kidnapping, conspiracy, assault, and related charges, he also faces allegations of involuntary deviant sexual assault, a sex crime under Pennsylvania statutes.

As Mitchell's sentencing hearing approached, Erickson said her biggest hurdle in a bid for lenience is Mitchell himself. "The sentencing is going to be difficult because he still feels that he was justified in what he did," Erickson said.

At the sentencing hearing, the judge was slightly sympathetic, noting that Moyer "provoked" Mitchell.

Regardless, the extremely religious man received close to a maximum penalty. Mitchell was sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison.