Convicted Native American child molester isn't a 'foreign diplomat,' Pa. court rules

July 04--A state appeals court has refused to void the 100- to 200-year prison sentence of a convicted child molester who claims he didn't receive a fair trial because he is a Native American.

That was one of the contentions Peter A. Treadway made in a failed appeal that Superior Court Judge Paula Francisco Ott described as "disjointed and largely unintelligible."

Treadway, 46, of Spring City, was contesting the punishment he received in March 2014 after a Chester County jury convicted him of 46 child-sex charges, including child rape counts.

Investigators said he spent years molesting the victim, starting when she was 9 or 10. At 13, she got an abortion after Treadway impregnated her, the girl testified.

Ott found Treadway's appeal, which he mounted without a lawyer, to be nothing more than a "rambling compilation of purported injustices."

She gave no credence to Treadway's argument that his case should have been dismissed because he wasn't promptly brought to trial. He also insisted that he wasn't tried before a jury of his peers because no Native Americans were on that panel.

In that same vein, Treadway claimed the state courts have no jurisdiction over his case because he is an Iroquois Indian and so should be "considered as a foreign diplomat," Ott noted.

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