A Pennsylvania appeals court has shut the door on Wilberto Melendez's last chance at freedom, rejecting his bid for a new trial in the fatal 2017 shooting of William Earl Cooper Jr. on a Lancaster street. Melendez, now serving a mandatory life sentence without parole, had argued the guilty verdict ran against the weight of the evidence. The three-judge panel disagreed, leaving intact a conviction that took nearly a decade, two mistrials, and a failed escape attempt to secure.
A Pennsylvania Superior Court panel of Judges Mary Jane Bowes, Anne E. Olson, and Megan McCarthy Kunselman issued a memorandum opinion, authored by Judge Bowes, affirming both Melendez's conviction and his sentence, according to Justia Law. The decision, tied to docket number 865 MDA 2025, upheld Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas Judge Merrill Spahn's earlier denial of Melendez's post-sentence motion for a new trial. The case was first reported by DailyVoice.com.
Melendez had argued his conviction “shocks one's sense of justice” because of alleged inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony, a claim the appellate court flatly rejected, ruling that witness credibility is a determination that rests solely with the jury, per the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office. That legal standard asks only whether the trial judge abused discretion in denying the post-sentence motion, not whether the appellate court itself finds the evidence persuasive.
A Street Confrontation That Turned Deadly
The case dates back to the early morning of October 27, 2017, when Melendez, Cooper, and others became involved in a series of arguments at multiple locations across Lancaster, per the DailyVoice.com report. According to the Superior Court's appellate memorandum, the dispute began roughly an hour earlier at a nearby Turkey Hill convenience store, where Melendez threatened to kill anyone who touched his wife before directing Cooper's cousin, Ernest Talton, to meet him on South Marshall Street, the same outlet notes.
Melendez and Cooper then met in the 300 block of South Marshall Street, where Melendez fired four shots at Cooper, striking him in the chest and abdomen, according to the DailyVoice.com account. Cooper, 31 years old, died several hours later at a local hospital. Multiple eyewitnesses identified Melendez as the shooter.
Key witness Artasia Lambert, a longtime acquaintance of Melendez who had driven Cooper and others to the meeting location, testified at trial that while crouched behind a vehicle seat she recognized Melendez by the distinctive red and blue jacket he had worn throughout the night, per Justia Law's account of the appellate record.
Cameras Tracked the Getaway, Not the Shooting
Surveillance footage from the Lancaster Safety Coalition, a community non-profit formed after a 2001 mayor-appointed crime commission, showed Melendez getting into a vehicle immediately after the shooting, but the system's approximately 170 multi-lens 4K cameras did not capture the shooting itself, according to App-Techs. The coalition operates independently of law enforcement while sharing live feeds and video records with police and 911 dispatchers, the same source explains. That gap in the footage meant prosecutors had to lean heavily on eyewitness accounts to secure the conviction.
After the shooting, Melendez attempted to silence an eyewitness, offering jewelry and an attorney in exchange for the witness's silence and warning that he would not mind doing it again if the witness testified against his wishes, per the DailyVoice.com report. The witness testified against him anyway. Melendez was also arrested in 2018 after attempting to flee to Canada, presenting fraudulent identification at a passport office in Philadelphia and carrying a fraudulent driver's license at the time of his arrest, the outlet reports.
Two Mistrials Before a Four-Day Verdict
Melendez's path to conviction was anything but swift. His initial trial in May 2019 was halted on its sixth day after a prosecution witness blurted out that Melendez had boasted in custody about committing a prior murder that he “beat,” prompting the judge to declare a mistrial over the prejudicial testimony, according to Fox43. Prosecutors had specifically instructed civilian witnesses minutes before testifying not to mention any prior criminal cases, the station notes. A second trial in 2021 also ended in a mistrial, according to DailyVoice.com.
Melendez then sought to bar any further retrial under double jeopardy protections, but in June 2023 the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed a trial court ruling denying that motion, finding prosecutors had not intentionally provoked the 2019 witness's improper outburst, per Justia Law's record of that earlier appeal. That cleared the way for a third trial.
A Lancaster County jury finally convicted Melendez in February 2025 after a four-day trial and roughly two hours of deliberation, finding him guilty of first-degree criminal homicide, firearms not to be carried without a license, possession of a firearm prohibited, and intimidation of a witness, according to DailyVoice.com.
Judge Cited Defendant's Lack of Remorse
At the April 2025 sentencing hearing, Judge Spahn said Melendez had “demonstrated absolutely no remorse whatsoever” before handing down the mandatory life sentence without parole plus an additional 4.5 to 9 years for the firearm and witness intimidation offenses, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office via CrimeWatch. Melendez was 48 years old at sentencing and had formerly lived on the 700 block of Rockland Street in Lancaster, per the same account.
First Assistant District Attorney Travis Anderson, who prosecuted the case alongside Deputy Assistant District Attorney Cody Wade, described Melendez during sentencing as “a profoundly dangerous man” and “the very definition of a career criminal” who repeatedly chose violence despite past chances to change, the CrimeWatch report states. Anderson also characterized Melendez's account of events as an abjectly implausible tale and a self-serving fantasy, according to DailyVoice.com.
Under Title 18, Section 1102(a)(1) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, any adult convicted of first-degree murder faces a mandatory sentence of either death or life imprisonment without parole, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. That statute left the trial court with no discretion over the primary life sentence once the jury returned its first-degree murder verdict, and it is the sentence Melendez will now serve out after exhausting his appellate challenge.
