<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"The nation&rsquo;s highest court has refused to hear the appeal in a bizarre case out of<br /><br />Northwest Pennsylvania in which a woman was convicted in the death of a pizza deliveryman who died after the collar bomb he was made to wear during a bank holdup ended up exploding.<br /><br />The U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to take up the appeal of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the convict serving a life sentence plus 30 years for the death of deliveryman Brian Wells back in the summer of 2003, according to a report Tuesday in the <i>Erie Times-News</i>.<br /><br />The newspaper reported that the high court&rsquo;s decision ends Diehl-Armstrong&rsquo;s direct appeals, and opens up the door for her to file habeas corpus appeals, which she can pursue on her own.<br /><br />Diehl-Armstrong was convicted by a federal jury in Erie in 2010 in connection with Wells&rsquo; bombing death, according to the <i>Times-News</i>.<br /><br />The woman had been convicted of conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery and two other charges relating to Wells&rsquo; death, which occurred when a bomb locked to his neck exploded after he robbed a bank in Summit Township, Erie County.<br /><br />While Diehl-Armstrong was sentenced in federal court, the newspaper reported, she remains in a Pennsylvania state prison, where she is serving a seven-to-20-year sentence for pleading guilty but mentally ill to third degree murder for shooting her boyfriend.<br /><br />She was sentenced to prison for that crime back in 2005, prior to the federal sentence in the bomb death incident.<br /><br />The <i>Times-News </i>reported that Diehl-Armstrong maintains her innocence in the Wells case, claiming that she was framed by a man named William A. Rothstein, in whose garage her dead boyfriend&rsquo;s body was found 10 years ago.<br /><br />Authorities had been investigating Rothstein in connection with the deliveryman&rsquo;s death, but Rothstein ended up dying of cancer in the summer of 2004, three years before Diehl-Armstrong was indicted in that case, according to the newspaper.<br /><br />Diehl-Armstrong had subsequently appealed her federal conviction to the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Third Circuit, which is based in Philadelphia.<br /><br />A three-judge appellate court panel, however, ultimately upheld her criminal conviction and prison sentence in the Wells case.<br /><br />The <i>Times-News </i>reported that the appeals panel agreed that U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin, the trial judge in the case, was correct in finding Diehl-Armstrong mentally competent to stand trial, even though the defendant had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.<br /><br />According to a past ABC News report, Wells, 46, had been killed when the homemade metal collar that an FBI agent once described as &ldquo;unique&rdquo; and &ldquo;sophisticated&rdquo; exploded after Wells robbed the PNC Bank in Northwestern Pennsylvania.<br /><br />Just prior to his death, Wells had told police that someone set a timer to go off on the bomb; officers were unable to remove the locked device before it detonated.<br /><br />During the trial, prosecutors had contended that Wells may have originally been part of the bank heist conspiracy, although Wells&rsquo; family maintained he was an innocent victim in the ordeal, according to past news reports."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://pennrecord.com/stories/510552764-u-s-supreme-court-declines-to-take-up-appeal-in-bank-heist-collar-bomb-death-case>