Trial opens for drug dealer accused of killing debt-laden partner

BATAVIA, N.Y. --A murder trial began Monday for a Connecticut man accused of kidnapping a fellow drug dealer, driving him to western New York to settle a debt and then shooting him when he tried to escape.

Seven jurors were chosen Monday and a jury will likely be seated Tuesday, court officials said.

Noah Gladding, 26, of Chester, Conn., faces state charges of first- and second-degree murder and second-degree kidnapping. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

He also faces the death penalty at a separate federal trial scheduled for March.

Authorities said Gladding kidnapped 24-year-old Jason Argersinger in small-town Chester in March 2005, shot him eight times and dumped him in a creek in Stafford, a hamlet 10 miles east of Batavia in western New York. The body was found weeks later by a sheriff's deputy.

Argersinger owed at least $400,000 to two partners in a marijuana trafficking ring, according to court documents.

Gladding smashed Argersinger on the head with a rock and -- aided by co-defendants Eric Connolly and Josiah Howenstine -- bound and gagged him and forced him into the trunk of a car, authorities said.

Gladding then drove the car a few hundred miles to Genesee County, intending to deliver Argersinger to drug dealers to discuss the debt. Instead, he shot Argersinger when he tried to escape, police said.

In a federal indictment handed up in December, Gladding and Connolly were charged with murder, kidnapping, conspiring to distribute marijuana and weapons possession. But only Gladding was charged with using a firearm to commit a crime of violence and causing a death.

Federal prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty for Gladding but not for Connolly, 23, in whose house the victim was kidnapped; or Howenstine, 26, who was accused of supplying Gladding with a 9 mm handgun.

Two other men, Mitchell LaFrance and Anthony Marinaccio, were indicted in connection with a drug ring prosecutors say operated from 2001 until Argersinger's death.