Longtime Westmoreland DA John Peck dies at 77
He held the position for 27 years before leaving office in 2021.
As Westmoreland County’s top prosecutor, John Peck would go to Mass every day.
And then he’d go to work, always well-dressed — even if it was a Saturday.
Friends and former coworkers remembered the former district attorney on Thursday as a mentor, exceptional trial attorney and family man.
Peck, 77, of New Kensington, was working more recently in a part-time role at the courthouse as a hearing officer.
He died Thursday at a Pittsburgh hospital.
He had prosecuted cases in the district attorney’s office since 1981, first as a parttime assistant and then as the county’s elected office holder.
It was a job he held for decades — he was first elected in 1994 and left at the end of 2021 after failing to secure a seventh term in office. He tried his last case in December that year.
For decades, he took on the highest-profile trials but also served as the lead prosecutor in cases that don’t always make headlines. When he wasn’t standing in front of a jury, he was reviewing case files and legal precedents from stacks of law books.
Former coworkers were devastated Thursday, recalling a man who was a mentor to younger attorneys and would offer advice on trial strategy.
“John led by example first and foremost,” said Judge Chris Scherer, who worked as an assistant district attorney in the office for six years in the 1990s. “He was always the first one in, the last one out. John would take the most difficult cases and would try them, more often than not, to a successful outcome.” Peck didn’t let politics get in the way of what he thought was right, Scherer said.
“John had a moral compass that was unbreakable,” he said.
Peck’s most notable cases include those of the six Greensburg roommates who were convicted in the 2010 torture and murder of a mentally disabled woman and the conviction of a Harrison man sentenced to death for the 2017 killing of New Kensington police Officer Brian Shaw.
In an interview with the Trib upon leaving office, Peck said: “I always considered myself a lawyer, not a politician. I don’t think about politics. It should never be part of this office.”
He spent much of his last weeks in office preparing for court hearings scheduled before year’s end.
“I am a steward of the District Attorney’s Office, and I am consumed to finish the job before I leave office,” Peck said. “I’ll miss the job, but it’s not the end of life. Next to my family, it’s extremely gratifying and fulfilling.”
