Homicide defendant Dwight Bowen is pushing for a trial sooner rather than later. The 43-year-old state prison inmate has filed motions asking for a speedy trial and discovery, and an omnibus pretrial motion. He filed those motions on his own behalf a day after his public defender attorney asked for a continuance of Criminal Call, which is now scheduled for March 6th.
Bowen is accused of killing his SCI Pine Grove cellmate, 32-year-old Luis Santiago, on January 1st 2019. Bowen called for prison guards shortly after 10 PM that night. They found him at his cell window and Santiago lying unresponsive on the floor, without a pulse and not breathing. Santiago was later pronounced dead at the Indiana Regional Medical Center, and an autopsy the next day established the cause of death as asphyxia due to venous obstruction.
Bowen is serving life in prison for guilty pleas to the 2001 murders of two toddlers, ages 3 and 1, in Philadelphia. They were killed in a Molotov cocktail firebombing of a rowhouse after a dispute between Bowen and another man. He is currently housed at SCI Houtzdale in Clearfield County.
President Judge William Martin did issue an order of the court last Thursday, but its content is not detailed on Bowen’s criminal docket sheet.
