By Justin Strawser
The Daily Item
SUNBURY — A 24-year-old convicted killer already serving life in prison for the murder of his cellmate was sentenced in Northumberland County Court to 40 to 80 years in a state facility for attempting to kill a state correctional officer in Coal Township in 2014.
President Judge Charles Saylor sentenced William Amos Cramer, currently incarcerated at SCI-Frackville, via videoconference Monday. Cramer was not sentenced in person because the inmate is too dangerous to transport. Less than 48 hours after Cramer was found guilty by a Northumberland County jury in November of slashing the throat of corrections officer Francisco Charriez, Cramer allegedly tried to kill another correctional officer with a shank.
“We do not have the facilities to hold you, we are very limited in our resources at the moment,” Saylor told Cramer, who had requested to be sentenced in person. “With the security risk you present, I will not put the sheriff deputies at risk when we can accomplish this through video.”
Cramer, a self-proclaimed white supremacist whose attacks on correctional officers were allegedly motivated by race, said he is unable to properly file paperwork for appeals because prison officials are retaliating against him. Saylor appointed Public Defender Michael Suders as Cramer’s attorney instead of a stand-by counsel.
Cramer was found guilty in November to a criminal attempt of homicide, four felony counts of aggravated assault and two misdemeanors of possessing an instrument of crime and possessing an offensive weapon. Saylor sentenced Cramer on Monday to a total of 40 to 80 years to run consecutive to his previous sentences and he ordered him to pay the costs of prosecution.
Saylor said Cramer has 30 days to file post-sentence motions or to file an appeal to a higher court.
Cramer, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of his cellmate in the Cambria County Jail in August 2012, claimed he preemptively attacked the guard because he felt outnumbered and threatened by the non-white prisoners and correctional officers while he was in the State Correctional Institution at Coal Township in August 2014. He attacked Charriez out of fear of racial prejudice, he told the jury.
Cramer was five years into a nine-year sentence for a western Pennsylvania robbery when he killed his cellmate in 2012. He had several charges filed against him for assaults in various state prisons before the conviction.
Two days after Cramer was sentenced in Northumberland County, he stabbed correctional officer Jared Michael Mausteller in the neck and arms with a shank made from a razor blade and other materials. Cramer said Mausteller was friendly to black inmates and he has nothing else left to lose, according to court documents.
Cramer’s latest attack is pending in the Schuylkill County Court of Common Pleas. No court dates are currently scheduled.
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