Two brothers who pleaded guilty in the 1995 murder of their parents in Lehigh County could be resentenced a second time.

A three-judge panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court on Friday, Jan. 9, vacated the February 2024 sentences handed down in the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas for Bryan R. Freeman and David J. Freeman.

Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin Holihan has a 30-day window to let the resentencing order stand or appeal. The appeal options are to ask a panel of more than three Superior Court judges to reconsider or take the appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, he said Monday.

“At this point we’re only a couple of days in, so we are considering what option to take,” he told lehighvalleylive.com.

The Superior Court judges on Friday said Lehigh County’s now-president judge, William Reichley, “abused his discretion by refusing to recuse” himself in the brothers’ resentencing two years ago, according to the ruling.

On the night of Feb. 26, 1995, in the Freeman family’s Salisbury Township home, Bryan Freeman fatally stabbed their 48-year-old mother, Brenda Freeman, and David Freeman bludgeoned their father, Dennis Freeman, 54, to death with an aluminum baseball bat. Their 11-year-old brother, Erik Freeman, also was beaten to death.

Bryan and David Freeman pleaded guilty in December 1995 and each received a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Bryan Freeman was 17 and David Freeman was 16 at the time of the killings.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a mandatory life sentence for a juvenile is unconstitutional. That paved the way for the Freeman brothers’ resentencing two years ago — to between 60 years and life in prison.

Both have served three decades in prison and would be in their 70s before they would be eligible for parole.

An accomplice convicted for his role in the death of Dennis Freeman, Nelson “Ben” Birdwell, had turned 18 about two weeks before the deaths. His life sentence stands, although he has an appeal pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court over his legal representation.

None of the three admitted guilt or was convicted in Erik’s death.

Reichley presided over the Freeman brothers’ 2024 resentencing despite having served “as the Lehigh County prosecutor in the case of a copycat killer, Jeffrey Howorth,” according to Friday’s ruling. Howorth, 16 at the time, fatally shot his parents, Susan and George Howorth, on March 3, 1995, in their Lower Macungie Township home.

The Freeman brothers argued the prosecution’s “theory in Howorth’s case was that Howorth was ‘inspired’ by the Brothers’ murders of their family, and that was why Howorth murdered his own family weeks later,” the Superior Court ruling states.

That “raised substantial doubts regarding Judge Reichley’s ability to preside impartially over the brothers’ resentencing,” according to the ruling. The Freemans’ appeal of their 2024 resentencing also noted Reichley was prosecutor in an appeal filed by Birdwell.

“In reaching our conclusion, we emphasize that our standard of review is not whether Judge Reichley is subjectively capable of being impartial,” the Superior Court panel wrote, continuing: ”Rather, our standard of review is an objective one of whether a reasonable person would conclude that an appearance of bias exists.”

The order remands the Freeman brothers for resentencing by another Common Pleas Court judge.

Reichley did not immediately return a call for comment.

“The problem is not ‘was Judge Reichley unfair’,” Holihan said Monday. “The question is ‘would a normal person on the street think Judge Reichley would be unfair.’”

“You want the justice system to be fair, but you also want it to appear to be fair,” the district attorney continued.

When the Freemans might reappear for resentencing a second time is unclear.

“It’s really a question for me,” Holihan said, “(of) where the public interest lies. Does the public interest lie in pursuing an appeal that spends another couple of years and a lot of money and comes up empty and then we resentence them again after all of that, or is the public’s best interest to just do the resentencing now?”

David Freeman’s attorney, Matthew Rapa, on Monday said a second resentencing could require time-consuming evaluations and reports before being decided.

“Obviously, Mr. Freeman is satisfied with the decision,” he told lehighvalleylive.com. “It gives him the chance at hopefully a meaningful appeal in the future.”

Bryan Freeman’s attorney was unavailable for comment.