In Frein case, Louise Luck will look at the man behind the monster

By Vicki Botta
GOSHEN — As a girl, Louise Luck of Goshen strongly identified with the "Peanuts" character Lucy, who gave psychological advice to her young friends. They'd confide in her, and she enjoyed helping them. It was perhaps only natural that Luck went on to pursue a career in psychology.

Now she's part of the defense team that will peer into the psyche of Eric Matthew Frein, the man accused of killing a Pennsylvania state trooper outside the Blooming Grove, Pa., barracks on Sept. 12 and wounding a second.

“The court wants to know the person they are sentencing, and wants to be able to give that particular person an appropriate sentence,” said Luck, who is a mitigation specialist. “You cannot really appropriately sentence unless you know who your client is.”

She said she cannot comment on any aspect of the Frein case. Frein will appear at a preliminary hearing before District Justice Shannon Muir Tuesday morning at the Pike County courthouse in Milford.

A mitigation specialist must be assigned to the defense team of any person facing capital charges. The team also includes two attorneys and an investigator. Luck describes her role as the “social historian of the team,” documenting the tragedies in her clients' lives. She is retained by the attorneys in these cases, and not directly by the defendants.

She works to get clients a life sentence instead of the death penalty after they've been convicted for first-degree murder. The Pike County District Attorney, Ray Tonkin, said he is seeking the death penalty in the Frein case.

Luck helps the courts determine the factors that might mitigate the defendant's crime, whether it be trauma in their past, or perhaps their capacity for kindness despite an horrific upbringing. She testifies at the penalty phase, and encourages witnesses to turn the prosecutors' monster image back into individualized, humanized beings. She has on appeal saved the lives of many convicts sentenced to death.

She is quick to say that her investigation of a defendant's social, mental, physical, family and psychological history is by no means used to justify what the defendant does, but only to explain the frailties and difficulties in his or her life. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, alcohol and substance abuse are often passed down through the generations, she said.

Stopping the cycle of violence
Luck says she's very sympathetic to the victims' families in these crimes. This comes from personal experience. A close childhood friend of hers, Elaine Norton, was bludgeoned to death in her fifth month of pregnancy. At first, she wanted the killer to get the death penalty. But then she changed her mind, believing that a lifetime spent reflecting on his crime would be worse than death.

Luck said anger and multi-generational trauma are usually found in the histories of people who commit the most horrendous crimes. She said she has stepped into some very strange and frightening situations when learning about her clients.

Teachers and coaches who bond with kids at risk are the most effective agents in turning things around. A gesture as simple as giving a child a smile can work wonders for someone in need of positive recognition, she said.

Famous cases
Over the past 17 years, Luck has been involved in some 300 death penalty cases, and in numerous states. Her interest in mitigation began after working with Steve Lundgren, the former district attorney in Sullivan County, on a serious sex case. Her client had a severe, traumatic brain injury. Luck has since worked with attorneys in numerous states across the country.

She is well-known in her field through her work on many high-profile cases involving heinous crimes, with the Frein case just one in a long list. Some of her biggest include the famous Craigslist murder, in which newlyweds Miranda and Elytte Barbour were convicted of murdering a man they'd lured with an ad in 2013. Luck also worked on the case of Baruch Lanner, who was convicted in 2002 of sexually abusing girls who attended the religious school where he had been principal.

Luck's offices in Manhattan and Orange County also help people correct their behavior, with monitoring and counseling for drugs and alcohol.

From probation to mitigation
Luck's interest in the criminal mind began before she graduated from SUNY New Paltz. At the suggestion of a friend, she took the probation officer test without even knowing at the time what the job entailed.

While working on her masters degree at Marist College\, Luck became a probation officer, making sure her clients got therapy and the programs they needed. She also prepared pre-sentencing investigations, mandatory for any offender facing a year or more in prison after pleading guilty. She reviewed school records, employment histories, drug and alcohol use, mental health problems, and family histories. She then worked as a state corrections counselor, addressing inmate needs, making suggestions regarding security levels, and classifying inmates according to their flight risk, the level of violence in their sentence, prior violence, and other factors.

From there she became an institutional parole officer, looking into the progress of inmates, and recommending training programs, anger management, and alcohol or drug programs. She made recommendations about whether inmates should be released.

After her marriage, her husband, Dr. Bernard Luck, made it possible for her to have her own practice, where she could help a smaller number of clients and address their needs on a more personal level. She calls her business Court Consultation Services. She is one of only a handful of sentencing advocate and capital mitigational specialists in New York State, and among only two or three hundred in the entire country.

In her non-capital cases, her primary concern is addressing the difficulties that lead clients to offend.

“If you can identify and work at correcting these issues, you will be able to address future reciticism and community safety," she said. "It's a moral obligation to our community at large."