The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the sentence given to a convicted Lancaster County killer at the beginning of this month.

The court found that Christopher Lyles waived his weight of evidence claims by not raising them previously and noted that even if the claims had been properly preserved, they would find each to lack merit. A memorandum was filed April 1, 2022.

Lyles was sentenced to life in prison plus 12 ½ to 40 years after a 2020 trial in Lancaster County Court for his role in the 2016 killing of Dennis Pitch during a home invasion in Narvon in Salisbury Township.

Testimony from a codefendant, fellow prisoner and cell phone location evidence all corroborated Lyles being in the Narvon area around the time the crime occurred.

Lyles and defense filed a post-sentence motion challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a deadly weapon enhancement, the constitutionality of his sentence and the discretionary aspects of his sentence, which the court denied.

He then filed a timely notice of appeal questioning the verdict being against the weight of the evidence regarding the cell phone location coordinates placing him at the crime scene and whether the testimony of the prisoner could be accepted.

The Superior Court stated in its memo, “Our rules of criminal procedure establish that a challenge to weight of the evidence must be preserved in a post-sentence motion, a written motion prior to sentencing, or an oral motion that precedes sentencing. Otherwise, if it is not raised with the trial court in any of these formats, it is waived.

“Although Lyles filed a post-sentence motion, that motion contains three arguments wholly unrelated to the weight of the evidence assertion.”

Lyles remains in state prison.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Fetterman won the trial conviction with assistance from Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Ponessa.

Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Jonathan Potoka filed charges.

MEDIA CONTACT: Sean McBryan, semcbryan@co.lancaster.pa.us; Twitter: @SeanMcBryanLanc.