SKIPPACK TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — A mistrial has been declared in the first-degree murder trial in Montgomery County of a state prison inmate accused of beating and choking his cellmate to death in 2024.
The judge declared the mistrial on Wednesday after learning the coroner’s office had additional information on the case that it had not turned over to prosecutors, meaning it had also not been provided to the defense.
Nathan Blose, 41, is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of 45-year-old Shaun Harden in a cell in the restricted housing unit at SCI Phoenix, formerly Graterford Prison, in Skippack.
On the first day of the trial, prosecutor Gabrielle Hughes pointed to video from the facility that showed Blose and Harden were the only two men in the cell on the night of Oct. 31, 2024. She said two men went into the cell, but the next morning, Harden was found dead on the floor, partially covered by a bed sheet. Blose, his cellmate, told corrections officers he found him that way.
According to Hughes, the autopsy of Harden found hemorrhaging on the victim’s neck and bruises all over his body, similar to what she called “a beatdown.”
She said Blose never notified guards, despite each cell being equipped with an emergency button, and that the officer who handled Harden’s intake earlier in the day noted no significant injuries.
However, defense attorney Scott Frame said no one knows what happened in that cell, because the guard who was supposed to be making rounds didn’t make the checks as he was assigned, noting there was only one mattress in the two-bed cell, which could have sparked a fight.
Moreover, he noted that Harden had to be airlifted from a western Pennsylvania prison with internal bleeding in his chest from a beating 27 days earlier. Detectives didn’t get his medical records from the time between that beating and his death.
Blose has been serving a 3 ½- to 7-year sentence for firearms violations and for headbutting a police officer in the face in 2020. Harden was nearing the end of a 4- to 8-year sentence for molesting three children in 2014.
The trial has been rescheduled for April.