The Superior Court of Pennsylvania last week rejected an appeal from a former Lancaster man currently serving a life sentence for shooting a man to death on a city street who had requested a new trial.

Wilberto Melendez, formerly of the 700 block of Rockland Street, “failed to conquer the steep hill to prove” that Lancaster County Judge Merrill Spahn abused his discretion in denying Melendez’s post-sentence motion for a new trial, the Superior Court wrote in their Sept. 24 opinion.

Melendez, 49, is currently serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional four and a half to nine years of incarceration for shooting 31-year-old William Earl Cooper Jr. following an argument in October 2017. Cooper, who suffered two gunshot wounds, died of his injuries several hours later.

In his appeal Melendez asked the Superior Court to consider if witness testimony used against him during his February 2025 trial was “so tenuous, vague and uncertain” that the jury’s guilty verdict and Spahn’s subsequent rejection of his post-sentence motion “shocks the conscience of the court.” 

The Superior Court rejected Melendez’s appeal, writing that “it is within the province of the jury, and only the jury, to assess the credibility of the witnesses that appear before it” and that Spahn did not abuse his discretion in denying Melendez’s challenge.

First Assistant District Attorney Travis Anderson, who prosecuted the case alongside Deputy Assistant District Attorney Cody Wade and submitted his own brief urging the Superior Court to reject Melendez’s appeal, wrote that Melendez’s version of events were “an abjectly implausible tale” and “a self-serving fantasy.”

“It is not conscious-shocking that the jury credited the Commonwealth’s evidence,” Anderson wrote, “especially when weighed against Mr. Melendez’s fanciful tale and the clear reason why Mr. Melendez felt compelled to concoct such a yarn.”

And, Anderson noted, the Commonwealth also presented evidence during the trial that demonstrated that Melendez was aware of his guilt, including his attempts to flee the country using a fake passport, a “campaign of threats and cajolery” aimed at intimidating an eyewitness to the shooting and the fact that he provided police with a fraudulent driver’s license when he was eventually arrested three months after the killing. 

The jury “had to weigh the entirety of the Commonwealth’s case,” Anderson wrote, and the evidence of Melendez’s guilt was “overwhelming.”

A Lancaster County jury had found Melendez guilty last year of first-degree murder and related offenses for the shooting.

Though the moments before the shooting and immediately afterwards were captured by Lancaster Safety Coalition cameras, the shooting itself was not. During the trial the Commonwealth relied on multiple eyewitnesses who testified that Melendez was the one who shot Cooper during the 49-second gap in the surveillance footage. 

Testifying in his own defense during the trial, Melendez admitted to being present at the time of the shooting but claimed he was there in order to rescue a third individual who Anderson said was “unknown to the investigation or to any other witness” from Cooper and an armed gang of six men. Melendez claimed on the stand that it was only after he charged into the midst of the confrontation that the man shot and killed Cooper.

Shortly after being sentenced Melendez motioned Spahn for a new trial, arguing that the testimony used against him was “inherently inconsistent, irreconcilable and illogical.” Melendez argued in his motion that the jury “improperly ascribe[d] greater weight” to the testimony of the three eyewitnesses who identified him as the killer rather than a fourth eyewitness’ more ambiguous recollection and his own testimony on the stand. 

But Melendez’s argument in his appeal was not only “quixotic,” Spahn wrote, but “strained not only credulity, but simple common sense.” 

Spahn, who had presided over the trial, noted that the jury was not only not obligated to give Melendez’s version of events any special weight, but they were also “not persuaded by [his] self-serving testimony.”

Melendez, Cooper and numerous other people had engaged in an argument at several locations in Lancaster city in the early morning hours of Oct. 27, 2017. Melendez, Cooper and another individual ultimately met in the 300 block of South Marshall Street in Lancaster city to work out what happened, but instead Melendez shot at Cooper four times, striking him in the abdomen and legs.

After the shooting Melendez repeatedly attempted to bribe one of the eyewitnesses with jewelry and by hiring an attorney for them as well as threatening them that he “wouldn’t mind [killing] again” if they went against his wishes. Melendez also attempted to flee to Canada and furnished fraudulent identification materials at a passport office in Philadelphia.